“Speak No Evil” will waste your time. So much so that I forgot about this movie the second I walked out of the theater. No joke. I had to look up the title of the movie three times prior to writing this review. “James McAvoy thriller movie 2024,” has since filled my search history. 

The movie follows the generic trope of a couple taking a pleasure trip to paradise, only to find their exotic stay develop into a carnage fest. 

The movie was adapted from a Danish psychological thriller horror by Christian Tafdrup. After skimming the plot summary, I have to say the original sounds much more interesting. 

But, two years later, Hollywood had to get its grimy, greedy hands all over the screenplay and adapted it into this filth.

The film starts with Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy) and his family struggling to have a good time while on vacation in the rich Italian countryside. Ben is boring, generic and a pushover the whole movie. His wife, Louis (Mackenzie Davis), is high-strung and obnoxious, acting as overblown and bad as Shelley Duvall’s role as Wendy in “The Shining.” 

Their daughter Agnes was played wonderfully by Alix West Lefler, but the character was used more as a device to both forward and hinder the plot more times than an emo teen questions their existence in the dead of night.

The family meets another family at their Italian villa and the attraction is instantaneous. They meet McAvoy’s character Paddy, his wife, and their son. They become great friends and decide to see each other again.

And where do they choose to see each other? At this new couple’s house way off in the middle of nowhere. And guess what, there is no cell service. What a surprise.

If you’ve seen any thriller ever, you’ll know where this is going. It’s impossible to understand why the characters themselves don’t. The twist to their situation was so obvious that a color blind person could have seen the red flags.

What’s worse, characters simply do things like puppets on the writer’s strings. They are given no autonomy and are written with neither interest nor passion.

The movie is driven purely by plot, there is no story here. 

The worst part about the whole experience? The movie is actually not that bad. If it were, you could at least make fun of it with friends, or passionately rant about how terrible it was. But no, you can’t. You’ll simply walk out of the theater feeling cheated and dirty for having watched — what was the name again? Right. 

“Speak No Evil” was the worst kind of bad — average bad. The writing was poor but not awful. The camera shots were as interesting as they were boring. Most of the acting was forgettable. But some, mostly McAvoy’s, was actually pretty great. His style can be so hyperbolic — there is simply no one right now who acts like a crazy man in a more convincing manner than McAvoy. Watch “Split” (2016) for proof, and stay far away from this nothing-movie.