James McAvoy and James Watkins on Speak No Evil

American expats Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy) are utterly charmed by British couple Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) when they meet by chance on holiday in Italy. So when the Daltons, who’re working in England, get an invitation for a weekend away at Paddy and Ciara’s farmhouse in Devon, they leap at the chance to leave behind their everyday squabbles about infidelity and unemployment. A relaxing getaway with their daughter, Agnes (Alix West Lefler) – who’s the perfect age to be a playmate for Paddy and Ciara’s shy son, Ant (Dan Hough) – would be just the ticket. 

From the moment they arrive, it’s like a shared apartment listing that looks good on the surface but more like a human trafficking hub once you read between the lines. Their hosts’ charisma slowly shifts into boundary-crossing creepiness, and Ant’s erratic behaviour has Louise and Ben wondering just what the English get up to in the countryside. 

“For Ben and Louise, are Paddy and Ciara weird or are they just quirky English eccentrics?! Is their house shabby chic or just shabby?” asks screenwriter and director Jesse Watkins. “I felt all these cross-national confusions would be a rich ingredient in the stew of social anxiety I wanted to cook.” 

Be warned! This getaway could be one you’ll never escape. 

Stream Speak No Evil now. Rotten Tomatoes rating: 83% fresh.

Speak No Evil Producer Jason Blum knew he could horrify audiences in a whole new way when he saw 2022 Danish horror sensation Gæsterne (The Guests). “I’m always glad to be the guy who gets the call when someone sees something disturbing – if it ruins your day, call me!” he jokes. “So I arranged to see it and I was floored. As it unfolded, I recoiled with each new revelation, and when it was over, I couldn’t shake it. I believed that in the right hands, (it) could be a very memorable, very unsettling, very special film.” He tapped director James Watkins to adapt the story to explore a mismatch between English and American characters, language and manners. 

Doubt for dinner, redpill for dessert

“The Daltons, particularly Ben, have been ground down by life, or at least, their lives don’t match up to the packaged perfect lives they are daily told they should be living by the feeds on their devices,” hints James Watkins. “Ben is particularly troubled. He feels that he’s past his prime, on the scrapheap. He’s not sure how to negotiate the modern world and its new codes. Paddy opens a door for Ben that makes him wonder: is there a better way of living? 

“I wanted to explore a modern crisis in identity, that sense of disenfranchisement that leaves people – mainly men – open to bad mentors like Paddy, who reject all the rules, who promise to ‘take back control,’ who reject the packaged and the polite in favour of some notion of ‘authenticity’,” James explains. “I wanted the audience to slightly fall under Paddy’s spell in the way that Ben and Louise do and show how easy it is for a ‘normal’ man like Ben – who has fragilities but is by no means an extremist or an oddball – to buy into this dream and thus become complicit in the s***storm that it creates. As Paddy says, when Ben and Louise ask him why he’s doing what he’s doing to them: ‘Because you let us.’”

“In real life, very few of us are equipped with how to deal with conflict, with overt aggression. So how do normal people confront this abnormal situation? Can Ben and Louise ultimately reject Paddy’s world view?” James asks. “I wanted Ben to have to confront the false binary of masculinity – raw caveman strength versus modern ‘liberal’ weakness – that Paddy thrusts upon him, and I wanted to lean even further into the themes of toxic masculinity and how violence breeds violence through generations.”  

The White Lotus: Devon?

In tackling this conflict, James lists drama series The White Lotus as a major inspiration. “In my head, Speak No Evil was always a psychological thriller with a horrific core. The tension hopefully blooms from the psychological exploration of each character and how they interact in a modern social setting. All the films that informed this approach peel away the layers of ‘civilised’ life to revel in the power struggles of social interaction and explore the barely suppressed rage polite, smiling people feel towards each other. White Lotus recently did this brilliantly, and I love the ‘dramedy’ of Mike White’s work, how his scenes veer between comedy and drama in the way they milk the horrors of every social interaction between the characters.” 

We all know a Paddy

At the heart of this horror is Paddy – the kind of bloke many viewers already know, and know to avoid. Paddy, who claims to be a “former” big city doctor, defines himself as an old-fashioned manly man who’ll have none of your “woke” vegetarianism and soy latte drinking city boy ways. Instead he lives a simple life filled with hunting, fishing, shooting and “rooting” … when he’s not holidaying in Italy, of course.

“Reading the script, what kept me going after page three was the fact that these characters felt like real people and that it was based on things that we can recognise in the real world,” says James McAvoy. “The film is constantly playing with what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable and the dangers we risk when we choose to put up with degrading behaviour or conditions because we don’t believe we deserve better, or don’t believe things can get better, or just don’t know how to think or talk about these things anymore.”  

“Paddy holds to an older, traditionalist expression of manhood,” adds the actor. “James Watkins and I really leaned into that aspect of him as we fleshed out who Paddy is, giving him some mythic heft with timely resonance. Here’s this man’s man, beholden to some ancient idea of masculinity, living in the countryside, living off the land … or so you think. It all seems so wholesome and earthy. And yet this is ancient England that we’re talking about, and there’s darkness in the land; there’s a history of violence and bloodshed and horrible things in that dirt, and so there’s evil in that earthy masculinity that he’s romanticising and selling.” 

“Paddy is incredibly entertaining and he’s always performing,” warns James McAvoy. “As much as Paddy is this likably mercurial, counter-cultural figure, there’s real darkness in him, and it’s always there for the audience to see. If there’s a way in which this movie is like a classic horror movie, it’s that part where the audience is yelling at the characters ‘Don’t go down that dark corridor!’ and yet they can’t stop going down it. The difference here is that the dark corridor isn’t literal. It’s Paddy and Ciara.” 

Stream Speak No Evil now. Rotten Tomatoes rating: 83% fresh.

James McAvoy quick-link list

1. Atonement
2. My Son
3. His Dark Materials Season 1-3
4. Wanted
5. Atomic Blonde
6. Band of Brothers

James McAvoy watchlist

1. Atonement

Golden Globe-, BAFTA-, and Best Picture Oscar-winning romantic war drama based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Ian McEwan. Starting in England in 1935, the deepening attraction between medical student and housekeeper’s son Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) and rich man’s daughter Cecilia Tallis (Kiera Knightley) is disrupted when Cecilia’s 13-year-old sister Briony (Romola Garai) accuses Robbie of raping her 15-year-old cousin, Lola (Juno Temple). 

James McAvoy is: heartbreaking and charming, with the kind of nuclear-strength chemistry with Kiera Knightley that’ll make you long for an evening gown and a library – even more than Beauty and the Beast did. 

2. My Son

Mystery thriller from director Christian Carion, adapted from his 2017 French film, Mon Garçon. Estranged father Edmond Murray (James McAvoy) is called to the site of his son Ethan’s disappearance, where he joins his ex-wife, Joan (Claire Foy), in the search party. After being questioned by the police, Edmond finds out some suspicious facts about Joan’s new partner, Frank (Tom Cullen), that set him and Joan off on their own investigation.

James McAvoy is: flying by the seat of his pants! To tell this unusual story, James wasn’t given a shooting script or dialogue. All he knew was his character’s backstory, so this role was the ultimate test of the saying that “acting is reacting”.  

3. His Dark Materials Season 1-3

This HBO and BBC One fantasy epic series is based on Philip Pullman’s Carnegie-winning book trilogy of the same name. Lyra (Dafne Keen) and her best friend Will (Amir Wilson), along with their shape-shifting daemons (animals that embody part of their soul or inner-self), search for answers when a friend of theirs disappears. As they uncover the cruel scientific experiments conducted by The Authority’s Oblation Board, which is headed by Lyra’s mother, Mrs Coulter (Ruth Wilson), they join a secret war. 

James McAvoy is: Lyra’s father – vain academic, adventurer and revolutionary Lord Asriel, who’s waging a secret war on The Authority. He’s a terrible father by most measures, and ready to admit as much to Lyra – unlike Mrs Coulter, whose sugary mommy act hides a wasp’s sting. 

4. Wanted

Slick assassin action movie loosely based on the Mark Millar and JG Jones comic book miniseries of the same name. Bullied office drone Wesley Allan Gibson (James McAvoy) finds out that his father was a member of The Fraternity, a 1 000-year-old secret society of assassins. It turns out his sweaty panic attacks were just thanks to his supercharged nervous system getting bored! Soon he’s on the run with another smirking assassin named Fox (Angelina Jolie), who takes him to a factory where The Fraternity’s leader, Mr Sloan (Morgan Freeman), finds out that Wesley has supernatural strength and speed when under threat, along with the ability to “bend” bullets so he can shoot around corners. 

James McAvoy is: so sweaty and weedy until his believable badass one-man-army transformation, and an epic rage-quit scene as he leaves his office job. His American accent is a lot less believable than him kissing Angelia Jolie, though. 

5. Atomic Blonde

Stylish spy action drama. In 1989, days before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a KGB agent steals a microfilm that lists every double agent active in Berlin. MI6 spy Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) is sent to recover the list before the KGB can capture her fellow spies, and to find the KGB double agent codenamed Satchel who’s working in MI6 Berlin station. Based on the 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart, so enjoy the visuals.

James McAvoy is: maverick MI6 Berlin station chief David Percival, an absolute shambles of a human being with a “street tough” London accent, who fits right in with Berlin’s grimier elements. 

6. Band of Brothers

After shooting Saving Private Ryan together, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg collaborated on this Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning HBO World War II drama miniseries. Based on historian Stephen E Ambrose’s 1992 non-fiction book of the same name and Easy Company soldier David Kenyon Webster’s memoir titled Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper’s Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich, the 10-episode series follows life and death on the Western Front of the war, in the US military’s “Easy” Company. To hear the real-life survivors from Easy Company share their experiences in their own words, watch the companion documentary We Stand Alone Together: The Men of Easy Company. 

James McAvoy is: a baby-faced 21-year-old in episode 4 (which centres on Operation Market Garden), playing paratrooper Private James W Miller with an American accent.