Your Film Professor

Seldom does a horror film come along that really disturbed me and left me a little shaken. (Of course, that may be because I don’t really watch “torture porn” horror films anymore!)  Speak No Evil (2022, Christian Tafdrup) is that film. With this blog post, I’m writing this as much to explain why I ultimately didn’t like the film but also to just work through why it disturbed me so much. I would just add that though I still don’t like Speak No Evil, I’ve gone from really loathing the film to at least seeing some value in it. Reading other people’s views of the film helped that shift. Indeed, to my surprise, Speak No Evil has gotten almost all positive reviews, some of them glowing. After reading dozens of reviews, I’ve come to a better understanding of why so many people liked the film and that became part of the process of softening my initial disdain for it though the key word here is “softening”; I still don’t like the film!

I’m going to dissect this film a bit so obviously that means SPOILERS ARE COMING!

Politeness Can Get You Killed

Where the film clearly has value is in its thorough skewering of societal expected “manners” or etiquette. We have all experienced this in one form or another, where we feel the tug of some oppressive adherence to politeness even in the face of being offended or even hurt by something someone says or does. More specifically, most if not all of us have experienced that family or friend moment when we force ourselves to be polite so as to not “rock the boat.” This observance of politeness can even take on deeper implications. That is, in some arenas of engagement, there is pressure for “manners” or politeness when something more forceful is needed, and here I’m especially thinking of politics (being civil with a predatory politician) or any situation where an Other (people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, working class, etc.) is being patronized because they are seen as lesser.

As so many have expressed, that’s what this film is largely about, a commentary on socially expected politeness when something more authentic is called for. Some reviewers have even called this film a satire, and I suppose in its use of irony and to a lesser degree exaggeration (the ending killing is certainly exaggerated), one could make that argument. In terms of the irony element, there is an especially running dark irony of how the “good couple” keep their sense of civility and politeness intact even though it is ironically for predators who mean to eventually kill them.

Still, this film doesn’t feel like a satire to me. Satires tend to call attention to their satirical nature, through biting comedy or over-the-top exaggeration or through some other element (didacticism, over-the-top acting, self-referential filmmaking, etc.) that breaks the realism. Think about some of the most important satires, such as the seminal A Modest Proposal or Animal Farm or the sublime Dr. Strangelove or the recent Don’t Look Up. For me, Speak No Evil feels too grounded in realism to be a satire. Calling Speak No Evil a “comedy of manners” or more aptly, as one reviewer put it, a “horror of manners” seems to better code the film. That doesn’t necessarily detract from its value, but I do think if it were a satire, that might obviate some of what I see as its many contrivances, since then they could be written off as exaggerations for effect and not supreme flaws in the film. If the film is a satire, that would also perhaps negate another facet of the film that makes me dislike it so much. I’ll come back to this point.

In short, to my mind, again, the film is played straight, a “realistic” film with a valid commentary on our (societally speaking) putting way too much stock on adhering to conventional, peer pressure “manners” even when one’s very survival is at stake. And that is a brilliant focus for a horror film and to a degree – for a while – the film did a great job of critiquing this “good couple,” and as the “good couple” become allegorical, many (most?) people who would take being offended, well, at least almost as much as they do. And that is a fun game to play ala what this film sutures us into, when would we say enough is enough or would we take it all the way to our deaths as this couple does???

Contrivances Sink the Film

For me, the film completely goes off the rails with its point being built on a series of hard-to-ignore contrivances. Most importantly for me is the message that the last 20 minutes of the film transmits. Before I get to that, though, I want to go through the crux of the film’s focus, the many moments when our “good couple” chooses manners or politeness over common sense and morality really and in the case of this film, survival.

Of course, because the “evil couple,” Patrick (Fedja van Huêt) and Karin (Karina Smulders), had generated so much good will during their time vacationing together, the “good couple,” Bjørn (Morten Burian) and Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch), understandably give them a long leash later so to speak before breaking from them and freeing themselves from the unseen web they had created.

So, when Patrick makes a very meaty meat dish (wild boar) even though he knows that Louise is a vegetarian (though really a pescatarian), Louise and Bjørn seem to accept that he just forgot, which is ridiculous because that just isn’t something a good human being would forget. Louise’s anal politeness gets so ridiculous that she even gets coerced into tasting the meat! Still, I imagine most people would indeed let this faux pas pass, but that it would be red flag number one, to be filed away for any other lapses of good taste and reciprocal good manners.

What comes next is a series of more serious offenses including Patrick creepily walking into the bathroom while Louise is taking a shower, Patrick playing hearing damaging loud music and won’t turn it down, Patrick’s cruel treatment of their “son” Abel (Marius Damslev), Patrick lying about being a doctor, and the topper, Patrick and Karin taking Louise and Bjørn’s distressed daughter Agnes (Liva Forsberg) into their bed, Patrick disturbingly sleeping naked next to her. Any one of these would have been enough for most people to bail from these obviously horrible human beings, but taken altogether, there are few people who would have stayed at what is an obviously toxic situation.

Coveting Phallic Masculinity

To obviate spectators’ incredulity at staying, the filmmakers create a suggestion that Bjørn has some alienation/masculinity issues and that he has latched on to toxic masculinity Patrick to perhaps give him an outlet or even a model for what he would like to be, presumably a more phallic (“primitive”) man who does what he wants instead of passively adhering to societal conventions and norms. Now while this is certainly plausible – many men confuse their alienated state of being with lacking more phallic (hypermasculine) masculinity qualities – the problem becomes ideological later in the film when Bjørn becomes the very thing he hates, a passive man. That is, the film itself seems to buy into this very arbitrary (ideological) norm, that men need to be hypermasculine, phallic (manly, find their “primitive” side) men. I’ll come back to this.

No Excuse for Naked Patrick

In any case, even if we accept that Bjørn will overlook these glaring red flags for his own self-centered needs, Louise clearly has no such issue and it makes sense that the outrage she felt seeing her daughter next to a naked strange man should never have been excused away – and this is glaring contrivance number one, that Patrick and Karin never give an acceptable excuse for this offensive act – and thus her insistence on leaving being the only option.

And they do leave at this point. They only come back for Agnes’ stuffed (security) rabbit and then are talked down so to speak by Patrick and Karin, talked into not only staying but incredibly kind of shamed for their lack of civility, even though, again, Patrick and Karin never have an answer to putting Agnes in their bed with a naked Patrick. Even if we accept that this couple are especially slaves to extreme and controlling politeness and thus would indeed let the above pass, what comes next especially defies reason, not to mention that this cascading ending is when we especially get the most blatant and impossible-to-disregard contrivances.

Bjørn’s Discoveries and…He Doesn’t Tell Lousie???

Bjørn wakes up and makes two disturbing and grisly discovers, that Abel has been murdered and a whole room full of photos of couples who have also presumably fallen under the bizarre spell of Patrick and Karin.

In terms of the latter, one of the things that makes me still dislike this film is how it thinks so little of humanity, and here I’m not talking about the obvious psychopathy of Patrick and Karin, but rather the many “good couples” who will excuse so many offenses. That is, this isn’t just about one “good” couple but many, many couples perhaps even in the hundreds, the suggestion being that most if not all couples who visit this evil couple fall into this same trap of putting “politeness” before reason, common sense, and morality. By putting up so many photos of couples, we get not the exception to the rule but the rule itself, that humanity overall is a pathetic and stupid and immoral lot. This begins to betray what seems to me a nihilistic view of humanity and thus a nihilistic film.

More Contrivances

So, now we come to the ending downward spiral and two glaring contrivances:

Ending contrivance #1: In rushing his wife and daughter out the door and to the car, Bjørn doesn’t tell Louise about his discovery. Instead of making her a partner in their escape – in the flight for their lives and their daughter’s life – he stays silent. To escape this situation, he needs his wife’s help, needs for her to know what their situation is, what the stakes are, but the filmmakers make this choice because they need for her to be ignorant of the situation so she will act in ways that make their situation worse. And I should add here that putting myself in Louise’s place, I couldn’t help but be infuriated that my spouse did not tell me what was going on, the only real way that I could protect my child. Was this sexism on the filmmakers’ part or do we all (and thus the filmmakers) rightfully condemn Bjørn for this choice?

Ending contrivance #2: Once they are in the car and on the road, they seem home free. Why the filmmakers felt like they had to let them escape only to get caught again I don’t know. All Bjørn had to do was stay on the freaking main road and drive fast and he would have escaped! At one point, he even stops to fill up his gas tank, which should have been a golden opportunity to enlist help from other people, not to mention report the murder of Abel and serial killers in the area. Driving down a side road and getting his car stuck was just another contrivance to get them back in the hands of the Patrick and Karin.

Once back in the clutches of Patrick and Karin, Bjørn knows that they are going to be killed. Though not having the same knowledge as her father, Agnes also instinctively knows something bad is going to happen. Here is where “ending contrivance #1” really gets felt, Louise inexplicably oblivious to their danger. (Didn’t she wonder why Bjørn rushed them out of the house so haphazardly??? Can’t she sense Bjørn’s panic? Wouldn’t her suspicions of Patrick and Karin be hyper-revived and thus her requiring that Bjørn tell her what’s going on?) For one thing, had Louise known from the start, she perhaps would have helped steady Bjørn’s hand to keep them on the main road instead of that stupid turn off. More pointedly, had she known what she was up against, Louise almost certainly would have gone with her husband knowing what her husband knows, that perhaps they were behind them the whole time and thus sitting ducks for them if they saw them get off the road.

The Film’s Problematic Ideological View of Masculinity

What happens next is just sickening and in my view adds to the problematic “masculinity” and nihilism issues with the film. Another man comes for Agnes, horrifyingly cuts off her tongue and takes her away with him. Bjørn offers some modest resistance but gets easily beat back by Patrick. And that’s it for resistance. At one point, Bjørn has a chance to drive the car into a urinating Patrick but fearfully chooses not to. Before getting out of the car, Patrick gives Bjørn a disgusted look, apparently confident that Bjørn would take no action. The director of the film, Christian Tafdrup, has said in interviews that he was interested in exploring this phenomenon in humans to “freeze” at moments of violent trauma. And Tafdrup is right that this is an important focus, one that hasn’t been explored much in mainstream film. Indeed, most people know about the “fight or flight” response to a traumatic violent incident but I don’t think many (most?) people are aware that there are actual four possible responses to violent situations, “fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.”

The “Freeze” Phenomenon

In terms of the “freeze” option, in the little bit of research I did, it seems to be mostly if not wholly a reaction by the self to “protect” the self in violent encounters. One particular violent traumatic situation when the “freeze” reaction particularly occurs is in sexual assault victims, who sometimes have no recourse to “fight or flight” and so the mind resorts to this “freeze” option. In terms of Bjørn’s “freeze” moment in this scene when Patrick urinates and then later for both Bjørn and Louise seeming to “freeze” as Patrick and Karin prepare to kill them, I couldn’t find any material suggesting that when it comes to protecting loved ones – especially children – that perhaps the imperative to protect one’s loved ones/children would supersede the “freeze” reaction. In any case, even if that isn’t the case and Bjørn’s choice here is completely out of his control, and I’m certainly open to that possibility, the problem for me is that Tafdrup never seems to offer an actual serious exploration of this “freeze” phenomenon. Indeed, for these last series of inactions, the film seems to be more about seeing this couple, and as they seem to represent the many couples that came before them, or humanity in general, as nihilistically lacking any agency when it comes to survival against violent predators. In other words, spectators aren’t alerted that this is indeed what Tafdrup is exploring – as might be set-up or later premised in a more serious exploration of the “freeze” phenomenon – and since most people aren’t aware that this is a very real psychological response, perhaps even when one’s child’s life is at stake, I suspect most people will just see Bjørn as Patrick sees him, as unmanly and pathetic, lacking some primitive (phallic) drive even though such a drive has nothing to do with this “freeze” reaction (phallic men freeze too!). And that also seems to point to a contradiction in the film, how Tafdrup seems to want it both ways, for people/men to tap into their phallic/primitive side (that would have changed this outcome?) while also wanting to explore this “freeze” phenomenon.

In terms of the former (“Tafdrup seems to want…men to tap into their phallic/primitive side”), that also becomes a way of toxically suggesting that somehow phallic masculinity is a necessary and understandably desired attribute for men. In other words, Bjørn is coded as not only polite to a fault, but he is also then coded as “cowardly,” his passivity in this moment coded as him not being able to act because he is too afraid to act. Arguably, this then retrospectively makes his adherence to polite civility more about him being a coward or lacking manliness than just being a slave to a norm we are all subjected to. And I should also stress here that why men are alienated has nothing to do with a lack in their masculinity. See my analysis of Fight Club for more on this point.

Sheep Led to Their Slaughter

Once Patrick and Karin take Bjørn and Louise to where they are going to kill them and dispose of their bodies, unbelievably Bjørn and Louise just blithely go along with being dispatched and in the most gruesome way possible. Even had Patrick and Karin had a gun, and they don’t (!), I can’t imagine that any survival instinct wouldn’t have kicked in by now, especially considering that they knew their daughter’s life was at stake as well, or, well, at least Bjørn knows this, knowing that Abel is dead. And here too the filmmakers’ view of humanity comes through, something beyond cynical and pessimistic. To my mind, suggesting that Bjørn and Louise would both “freeze” (and, again, because the film doesn’t properly contextualize any serious focus of this “freeze” phenomenon, one doesn’t really register this as a possibility) and not only not fight for their lives but most crucially not do everything in their power to fight for their daughter’s life is pure nihilism. (That room full of upwards to a hundred or more families suggests that this lack in parents has nihilistically led to the same amount of children’s deaths, a truly sickening thought.) We left the station for a “comedy/horror of manners” long ago and now it becomes something much more bleak, the suggestion that humanity is a cause not worth rooting for.

Understanding Why the Film Shifts to “Torture Porn”

One note on the film taking such an extreme turn to what seems to me “torture porn” horror (Agnes’ tongue graphically cut out; Bjørn and Louise stoned to death). After initially watching the film, I hated what seemed at the time to me gratuitous graphic violence. However, after some thought, I think I at least understand the point that the filmmakers are making here, and I would even say that it is a good one: Such brutal violence in effect becomes the REAL of what we were seeing for the whole film. In other words, this obvious REAL of Patrick and Karin and their REAL violence reveals their true state of (predatory, psychopathic) being, but that goes for Bjørn and Louise as well, their passive (dehumanizing) politeness earlier in the film is what we get in this moment, them just letting themselves be killed or dehumanized, unacceptable offense-by-offense equating to stone-by-stone. That is, unearned and inauthentic politeness, civility, etiquette in the face of predatory barbarity will always and only be to one’s detriment, violence to the self.

In this context, Patrick and Karin forcing Bjørn and Louise to strip also fits, in that their humiliating obedience is the point, their obeying irrational expectations of self-subjugating etiquette equates to stripping themselves of their humanity, the literal “stripping” then becoming glaringly symbolic (thank you for that great observation Peyton!).

The problem for me though is that because the film is played realistically not satirically, it is difficult to see past the realism of this moment and the nihilistic view of both an irrational and passive humanity. And that this equates to a horrific fate for Agnes makes this moment just too painful. (It is interesting to think about satires in this context, that many perhaps most or even all have this attribute, a nihilistic view of humanity. In this context, perhaps the flaw in the film for me is not so much the nihilism but that the filmmakers didn’t [more obviously?] make this film a satire.)

Cruelties to Children, Agnes’ “Torture”

And that brings me to my final reason for why I really don’t like this film, despite coming to understand its well-intentioned and valuable message.

There was a time when extreme cruelties inflicted on children in horror films was not seen. I understand why in some cases extreme cruelties to children in horror films should be seen, since in some contexts it wouldn’t make sense if that wasn’t the case (for example, think of the many zombie films where children were necessary victims). It may be that in fact Speak No Evil is a case when it is necessary to give us such cruelties to children – since, again, I guess the point here is how adhering to irrational “manners” literally risks one’s child’s life, this point getting punctuated in the extreme with Agnes’ fate – but what Agnes and Abel before her must endure is pretty tough to watch and at least for Agnes, and assuming what befalls this family is the same for all the other families and thus the case for the other children as well, feels infinitely avoidable and thus extraneous.

Consider the cruelties inflicted on Agnes: She is taken from her parents, her tongue is cut out, she is forced to take Patrick and Karin on as her new parents and as we have seen they are cruel and awful and unloving parent figures. Establishing herself as a very smart and intuitive girl, she must also know that Patrick and Karin have killed her parents, and also because of her intuitiveness, she won’t wonder long what happened to Abel, putting two and two together and knowing that she won’t be alive long, not to mention being forced to be with her parents’ psychopath killers. In short, for anyone with an ounce of empathy, this is hard to bear. And, again, it feels unnecessary and excessive even if we consider the film satirical.

And, for me, that’s the bottom line. In a world that seems to become more and more desensitized by the day to violence and dehumanized in general, this ending was the epitome of unnecessary and disturbing and realistic excess, and I must admit it, I felt the tugs of a nihilistic view of humanity that grows in me by the day, a view of a devolving humanity not an evolving one.