Speak No Evil

James McAvoy is charismatic and terrifying in this slow-burn psychological thriller about a family who find their new friends to be not the most inviting hosts.

I’m not sure when it was that James McAvoy, best known for playing wispy beta-male boy-men early in his career, transformed into a muscle-bound figure who excels at portraying villains like his character in “Split” and its sequel. All I know is he’s charismatic and terrifying as hell in “Speak No Evil.”

This slow-burn psychological thriller from writer/director James Watkins is an English language remake of the 2022 Danish film “The Guests.” It’s about an American expat family living in London who bump into a British clan while vacationing in Italy, hit it off and are invited — strong-armed, really — into spending a week with them at their idyllic countryside farm.

Early on, it’s clear things are not entirely right with Paddy, the patriarch played by McAvoy. He’s subtly controlling of his wife, Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and their son, Ant (Dan Hough), who was born with a disorder that results in a shriveled tongue, making it difficult to speak. But Paddy is charming in a huggy, modern Alpha male kind of way, and has a way of putting people at ease.

Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy (one of my favorite “that guy” character actors) play Louise and Ben, a youngish couple with a daughter, Agnes (Alix West Lefler), who’s almost 12. There’s some tension in their own lives: Ben recently lost his high-paying job with a big international firm, a gig that first brought them to London and forced Louise to give up her own position in public relations.

They don’t seem to be lacking for cash, as their posh excursion through Italian villas and restaurants would indicate, but with neither of the adults working they’ve begun to scratch at each other. Agenes is a shy kid who still relies on a rabbit doll, Hoppy, to keep her calm. Ben wants her to grow up but Louise is protectively maternal in that way that acts as a resentful rebuke to her husband.

Later, we’ll learn about some other divisions that lie between them.

Louise is put off by the way Paddy glares when he smiles, but Ben is having a bit of a bromance with the dude. He admires his confidence and swagger, things Ben lacks himself. Ciara seems nice enough, and Agnes and Ant immediately become playmates, something both struggle with. So when Paddy insists they come stay a week in the country, they accept it as a welcome change of pace.

Once we get to the farm, the movie becomes a deliberate cat-and-mouse game as it plucks the audience’s expectations and contrasts them with Louise and Ben’s growing suspicions. Paddy and Ciara keep sticking their noses where they don’t belong, like rebuking Agnes for chewing with her mouth open, and explain it away that they had troubled upbringings themselves and are working not to pass it on.

Over time it grows worse, and it seems apparent Paddy is an abuser, emotionally and probably physically, too. Ben and Louise keep shrugging it off until they can’t. We do that thing where we want to yell at the screen for them to not do the obviously stupid thing that victims always do in scary movies. It’s a subtle way of nudging us to unconsciously root for the killers.

Oops, did I say killers? Did I just blow the whole plot of the this flick?

Not if you’ve watched the trailer for this movie or seen the first 15 minutes of it. It’s clear from the jump this thing is going to end in a bloody contest between the two families. The film takes its jolly good time getting to this point — too much, probably — but the gradual ratcheting of tension pays off in a knee-gripping finale.

There are notes of “Straw Dogs” here, as snooty Yanks find themselves ensconced in pastoral England and disdained by the locals and their old-school ways, where men are clearly the head of the family and womenfolk are relegated to mothers and mothers-to-be. Louise acts out against these patriarchal attitudes, while Ben tends to reservedly wait and watch.

The showdown of “Speak No Evil” pretty closely mimics that of “Dogs” as well, with the Americans trapped inside the house and the Brits trying to lay siege and get in to massacre them all. It might be predictable, but it’s heady, well-done stuff.

McAvoy is the main reason to see the movie. His Paddy is repulsive, but of a sort that you can’t look away. When we finally find out the exact nature of his activities, it’s shocking but also in some ways not surprising. It’s a compelling portrait of malevolence cloaked in a manly throwback persona, the sort of fellow men want to be and all that.

The film fails to fill in all the holes. I would like to have seen more about the fracture between Louise and Ben, and how Paddy seizes upon it to divide them further. There are also times when it seems like the movie wants to move Agnes to the center of the story, but always swings back to the grown-ups.

But as a bit of anxiety-inducing entertainment, “Speak No Evil” hits all its marks.