Speak No Evil's ending makes a major change for the worse (2025)

Speak No Evil ending spoilers follow.

If you've spoken to anybody who's seen 2022 horror movie Speak No Evil, they'll likely have brought up its devastatingly bleak ending. Assuming they even had the will to engage with other human beings.

It's the kind of ending that horror fans have assumed wouldn't survive the Hollywood remake, and so it's proved. To be fair to writer-director James Watkins and lead star James McAvoy, though, they haven't hidden that fact.

Watkins said the ending was changed to fit "with my characters and their journey", something echoed by McAvoy. "I think it's the only ending our film could have, and it's the only one that would work for our film," he told Digital Spy.

"That's not to say that the other ending or the other film doesn't work as it does. It's a great film, but they're doing slightly different things, and they're trying to do different things to the audience."

A remake changing events isn't an issue in itself; the original movie still exists and you can just watch that instead. However, Speak No Evil falters in that the ending it's chosen just robs the movie of its power.

We have to go into some major spoilers for both the original movie and the new movie to explain just why, so look away now if you haven't seen them.

Speak No Evil ending explained

Both movies have the same setup, but they've changed the cultural dynamic between the two couples.

In the original movie, it's Danish couple Bjørn and Louise who come to regret agreeing to visit Dutch couple Patrick and Karin's rural home, while in the remake, it's American couple Ben and Louise who come to regret visiting English couple Paddy and Ciara's rural home.

Both movies see the 'nicer' couple (Bjørn and Louise/Ben and Louise) subjected to a series of awkward moments and microaggressions that get darker and darker from the other pair, largely led by the man (Patrick/Paddy).

Patrick and Karin (and Paddy and Ciara), are hiding the same dark secret, too: they make a habit of befriending a couple on holiday, inviting them back to theirs, killing them and then adopting the couple's child as their own – after cutting out his or her tongue.

However, the original movie and the remake diverge significantly when it comes to the final act.

In the original movie, it's as dark as it gets. Bjørn and Louise's daughter Agnes is taken and has her tongue cut out, before Patrick and Karin stone Bjørn and Louise to death. Yes, really.

Unsurprisingly, this is not what happens in the remake. Instead, Ben and Louise fight back and manage to kill Ciara before escaping the house. They are set to leave Paddy alive just so they can get the hell out of there, but Ant (the child they thought was Paddy and Ciara's) bludgeons Paddy to death with a massive rock.

And sure, watching a child brutally kill an adult (even an evil one) is still pretty shocking, but it's nothing compared to the original movie. The problem is that the remake slavishly follows the original up to this final act, leaving you feeling like it missed the point.

Perhaps the most egregious element is when the remake reuses the most chilling line from the original movie. When Bjørn asks Patrick why they're doing this to them, he replies: "Because you let me."

It's a perfect encapsulation of the themes of the movie: a social commentary on how avoiding confrontation so as not to seem impolite can lead to dire consequences. It's taken to extremes as it's a heightened world, but it's also all the more chilling for not explaining anything beyond "because you let me".

The remake includes this line when Paddy is asked why he's doing what he's doing, but then in classic Hollywood fashion, the explanation carries on. Watkins forgets the power of that line and convolutes it, saying they're doing it because Ben and Louise are rich, and forcing them to transfer money.

Rather than a nihilistic horror movie, it turns Speak No Evil into a generic thriller where good people have to escape from bad people. All the social commentary is jettisoned for a crowdpleasing action-packed finale.

Part of it could be put down to the cultural shift in the two couples; you maybe couldn't buy that an American couple wouldn't fight back where the original was meant to send up the Danish middle-class in the lengths they'd go to not to be rude.

However, Speak No Evil's big change just doesn't work because the remake so closely follows the original up to this point. There's nothing wrong with changing it up, but it had to commit to changing more in the build-up rather than just recreating the same scenes, albeit with slight cultural shifts in delivery.

If you've never seen the original, then it won't matter, of course. McAvoy is excellent as Paddy, genuinely terrifying and yet also very funny, and Watkins ratchets up the tension effectively.

But if you've seen the original, you'll wish the remake had committed more to bringing its own take to the story.

In the end, by only making a major change in the end and not throughout the movie means that a 2022 quote from Speak No Evil director and co-writer Christian Tafdrup to EW becomes prescient:

"Actors said no to castings because they thought the last 20 pages were just too much, and many people asked me to rewrite that. I tried to rewrite it with more hope in the end, and then it just became a bad American horror film."

Speak No Evil is out now in cinemas.