James Watkins knows how to make a social invitation feel threatening. We rate his patient handling of discomfort, though Speak No Evil exposes a weakness for familiar horror just when the unease should be hardest to escape.
Fi1m perspective
In Speak No Evil (2024), James McAvoy pours the wine and the Daltons cannot quite bring themselves to leave. James Watkins understands how much tension there is in that small failure to act. He keeps our attention on two families at a table, where accepting an invitation has begun to look like a mistake. For much of the film, we are watching people preserve good manners at the expense of good sense. This is where we find him most persuasive: letting an ordinary exchange become unpleasant without hurrying it towards violence.
His directorial debut, the self-written Eden Lake (2008), had already taken a couple into the English countryside and made the outing frightening. It is harsher than Speak No Evil, and we would still choose it for a properly unpleasant evening. The Woman in Black (2012) followed, favouring suggestion and atmosphere over gore. He moved into action with Bastille Day (2016).
His television work includes the Black Mirror episode Shut Up and Dance (2016), followed by McMafia (2018) and The Ipcress File (2022). He directed all of The Ipcress File, having been creator, writer and director on McMafia. Yet it is the work with McAvoy in Speak No Evil that makes the clearest case for his skill with actors. McAvoy's Paddy is sociable enough to make the Daltons' acceptance plausible, while Scoot McNairy and Mackenzie Davis give Watkins two guests reluctant to cause offence.
Watkins also wrote the remake, adapting Christian Tafdrup's Danish film of 2022, so the decision to soften it cannot be put down to somebody else's script. McAvoy gives him plenty to work with, but the film becomes less frightening as it settles into familiar horror. We noticed ourselves relaxing, because the uncomfortable business of saying no had given way to a kind of danger we recognised. That is a serious failure for a film which has made staying at a table feel so worrying. Try Speak No Evil for the strained hospitality, with fair warning that Watkins does not sustain it.
Biography
James Watkins is an English filmmaker. He was born on 20 May 1973 in Nottingham.
He wrote and directed the horror film Eden Lake (2008) and directed The Woman in Black (2012). He created, wrote and directed the series McMafia (2018), and directed an episode of Black Mirror (2016). Watkins wrote and directed the 2024 film Speak No Evil.
He has also written screenplays for films including My Little Eye (2002) and Gone (2007), and co-wrote and directed Bastille Day (2016).
