If you’re someone – like me – who has any measure of social anxiety, then you’re keenly aware that oftentimes there’s nothing more terrifying than finding yourself in an awkward situation with new people. It’s a completely unique type of fear, one that makes you overanalyze your every word and gesture out of concern for accidentally offending those around you. Or worse: making a fool out of yourself. Confrontation can be scary, and it can be easier to just go along with a certain level of discomfort – even abuse – rather than risk making a scene or coming across as rude.  

And while this fear of social faux pas has often been the central thesis for genres like the comedy or the drama, it’s been criminally unexplored within the horror landscape until relatively recently. Get Out dealt with this to a small degree, although the communal awkwardness of the film was, at its core, more about racial tensions than a generalized sense of social misunderstanding. But as someone who tends to overthink in social settings, it’s one of the purest forms of terror there is. It’s an untapped treasure trove of potential, in the right hands, to inspire some truly nail-biting tension and suspense.

But it seems like those sadistic bastards in the Nordic countries have discovered this, because the Danish released what is probably one of the most distressing films I’ve ever had the great fortune to watch last year with Christian Tafdrup’s  Speak No Evil. After premiering at Sundance back in January of 2022, it eventually saw an American release through IFC and Shudder later that year in September, where I happened to stumble onto it. And let me tell you, it absolutely ruined my day.

And I mean that as a genuine complement.

Speak No Evil is a film about my worst nightmares, even before anything remotely resembling horror film fodder starts happening. It follows a couple from Denmark vacationing in Italy with their young daughter as they encounter and befriend another husband and wife, along with their similarly-aged son, who hail from The Netherlands. The two pairs hit it off fairly quickly, and promise to stay in touch once their vacations have ended. Lo and behold, several weeks later, the Danish family receives and invitation in the mail from their Dutch counterparts to visit their rural homestead. They excitedly except, and soon find themselves in a new country at the behest and hospitality of their newfound foreign friends.

The introverts among you no doubt already have warning sirens firing in your heads.

What follows is a series of increasingly uncomfortable misunderstandings and cultural clashes as the unsuspecting Danes realize that they perhaps had less in common with their fellow Northern Europeans as they had originally thought. It starts small, as these things often do in real life: Differences in food tastes (and a disrespect of one member’s vegetarian diet), in acceptable levels of public affection and drinking, and in philosophies regarding parenting. And while the couples both speak English, the Dutch couple is prone to slipping into their native tongue – both unintentionally or otherwise – leaving their confused guests frequently grasping for meaning.

Not wanting to upset or offend their hosts, our protagonists politely grin and bare most of these small grievances and trespasses, chalking them up to simple cultural misunderstandings. Even as more and more information comes to light about their new friends and the lives they live – particularly in regards to some mistruths that they had previously been told – the Danes stick it out in fear of social transgression. This becomes a wedge between husband and wife, with one feeling her discomfort has hit a point of no return while another feels that it would be unthinkable to abandon their plans so early.

The entire film is an exercise in reading warning signs, and where one draws the line between benign and irreconcilable differences. We’ve all been there: At a party or a bar, with friends of friends that you aren’t quite sure of just yet, not wanting to cause an incident by speaking up when something uncouth happens. I myself am extremely guilty of this, having tolerated my fair amount of disrespect in the name of courtesy. To paraphrase a John Mulaney bit, you could spill hot soup on me and I’d probably apologize to you. The in-baked fair of an anxious person that any sort of confrontational effort could potentially result in some unforeseen disastrous consequences is exactly the sort of thing that Speak No Evil plays on.

How much are you willing to ignore just to keep the peace? Is it more important to be perceived as polite than to feel safe and comfortable? Do the opinions of strangers and acquaintances supersede personal autonomy? These are all tough questions to answer, made even more difficult within the film by the added pressures of geographical distance and language discrepancies. Our Danish protagonists genuinely can’t tell if they’re being deliberately tormented, or if the things that confuse and frighten them are just par for the course in The Netherlands. How can you confirm that without being seen as abrasive? If you leave, are you racist? Culturally insensitive?

This being a horror movie, their suspicions are ultimately proven correct, albeit in the most dreadful way imaginable. I won’t spoil anything that happens after the end of the film’s first act, because the shocking nature of the succeeding events are part of what makes See No Evil so remarkably effective. Suffice it to say, not since The Mist have I seen a film whose ending knocked the wind out of me so viciously. This is the type of movie that will leave you numb, staring at the rolling credits in utter disbelief of what you just saw. If that sounds like something you’d like to avoid, I don’t blame you. It’s not pleasant. Honestly, I can’t imagine myself watching it again. Not because it’s a bad movie, mind you, but because it’s so well made that it felt almost too real.

Recently, news of an American remake of the film surfaced, produced by horror monopoly Blumhouse and starring James McAvoy and Mackenzie Davis, which I find incredibly baffling. Granted, that’s an excellent cast, and director James Watkins – whose Eden Lake is a similarly devastating and nihilistic thriller – is the perfect person to tackle such dark subject matter. But Speak No Evil is a primarily English language film. Why does it need an American adaptation when it’s already perfectly understandable? And if Hollywood’s remakes of Martyrs and Oldboy are any indication, Speak No Evil’s American counterpart will likely lack the edge and grit that made the original so viscerally nightmarish.

Who knows, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe our version will be just as twisted and psychologically deconstructive. I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, given the talent attached. But in the meantime, if you’re in the mood for a movie that’ll rock the more socially introverted of among you to your core, look no further than this Danish gem.

Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.