“It’s more like ‘The Office’ than it is a horror movie!” Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy on Speak No Evil

“This film plays on the nuances of politeness and how humans in society now are really uncomfortable with sitting in their uncomfortableness,” says actor Scoot McNairy, who plays Ben in the new psychological thriller Speak No Evil, which also stars Mackenzie Davis as his wife, Louise.

“It’s more like The Office than it is a horror movie!” laughs Davis. “It’s so unbelievably uncomfortable for so long and then there’s some killing that happens, but you’re quite happy by the time the killing happens because you’ve just been covering your eyes with the social discomfort for so long!” 

Produced by the horror-producing mega factory that is Blumhouse and written for the screen and directed by Eden Lake’s James Watkins, Speak No Evil follows an American family, Louise and Ben Dalton, who, along with their 11-year-old daughter Agnes (Alix West), are invited to spend the weekend at the idyllic country estate of a seemingly charming British family – Paddy, his wife Ciara (played by James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi) and their furtive, mute son Antthey (Dan Hough) – who they befriend while on holiday. However, what begins as a dream holiday soon warps into a snarled psychological nightmare.

“Blumhouse has done an exceptional job at cornering the market on really smart psychological films like Get Out, The Black Phone,” McNairy points out. “But this one leans into that a little bit more and gives it a little bit more room to play and setup the psychology of it before it hits you over the head with that Blumhouse hammer.”

Speaking of those deeper, psychological elements, Speak No Evil brings up themes of class, manipulation and gender roles. For McNairy’s character, the idea of toxic masculinity is certainly brought to the fore in the relationship with sensitive and sensible Ben and ‘alpha male’ Paddy: “Toxic masculinity is definitely something that exists in the society that we’re in,” he says when we ask him about those elements of the story. “That being said, James McAvoy is not a toxic masculine person at all. So to watch him play it was really exciting and fun for all of us.

“I grew up in the south, where there’s this southern hospitality, and I wasn’t around that much toxic masculinity. I personally tend to avoid anything that’s toxic but I feel like that is one of the themes of this that really plays as prey to James’s character that worked for the film of that uncomfortability.”

The movie sees Ben and Louise put themselves in the path of Paddy and Ciara, even though – Louise at least – is wary of spending more time with them after their vacation, especially after witnessing some of this toxicity from McAvoy’s character, Paddy. However, they make the decision to be alone with them at their rural country estate.

For Davis, she believes a big part of their decision-making is due to the state of their relationship. “We meet the couple of Ben and Louise in a crisis moment in their relationship, where they’re in couples therapy and have had to make certain agreements about compromise,” she explains. “That’s sort of the root of a lot of the decisions that [Louise] makes that feel inexplicable, where you want her to stand up for herself is that she’s trying to save her marriage. 

“One of the ways that she saves her marriage is by being like ‘okay, we’ll do the thing you want to do this time’, because that’s what she needs to do, and it’s a good structure to justify that annoying ‘no, don’t go back. Why are they going back?’ thing in horror movies. 

“I get why they go back. I mean, it’s annoying and it’s hard, but it’s not just about getting away. It’s also about trying to save her marriage, which just adds a nice wrinkle to the whole thing.”

Indeed, Speak No Evil goes deeper than your typical horror movie tropes, and for McNairy, that could be where the real horror of the movie lies: “Our society isn’t necessarily so outwardly in regards to the fear of what might happen to us externally,” he says. “I think, within social media and the digital world that we live in, a lot of that fear now that we have is internalised or it’s our sense of self or sense of how we feel about ourselves. Thriller and horror is moving into that world of how we really play into the fears of the youth. And that’s some of the things that the youth really, really fears!”

Moreover, Davis ponders on the idea that it is the safety of those typical horror tropes that audiences expect that means you can delve into those real horrors of society and discuss some of the deeper themes that you may not expect in a horror story.

“We know what to expect in horror movies, which is; you’re fine, something weird happens, tons and tons of action, generally, the heroes win. Sometimes they don’t. But because there’s this infrastructure, you can hide the vegetables inside of it and get people to engage with stuff that they’re not expecting or that you wouldn’t want to go and see in a straight drama movie, because it would feel too issue-based,” she says. “It’s nice to be able to have both where there’s something stimulating for your brain, but also your nervous system is all a-twitter!”

Speaking of nervous systems being all a-twitter, McNairy hopes that audiences will be “scared out of their minds” once those credits roll at the end of the movie. “I want people to take the same thing they take out of any Blumhouse movie,” he continues. “They were scared out of their minds. It was a full ride. It was high octane, and at the end, it left you feeling a little icky!”

Speak No Evil is out in cinemas now. Read our review here.