The Tartan

By Eshaan Joshi

Have you ever felt just that tiniest bit of fear? Not the big ones, we all instinctively know what the big ones are, because they’re everywhere. It’s the fear of heights, the fear of falling, the fear of drowning and spiders and the things that go bump in the night.

But they’re not the sort of fear that lingers, are they? A spider can be swatted, you can always walk away from that ledge, and honestly, if you pull a frat boy and put your mattress directly on the floor, not only can you scare away any social interaction, you can also be guaranteed that there are no further monsters under your bed.

Then you wake up the next day and your professor, the haggard old man he is, looks around the class, raises a ghastly skeletal finger, and points it directly at you.

“Can you answer number three for me?” he snarls.

Heads swivel. A classroom full of students (at least, those not engrossed by some variation of social media on their devices), turn to look at you, and you. Just. Flounder. You have been perceived.

Class ends. It was horrifying, and on the way back, you run into that annoying floormate of yours. You know the one? Just a little too excited, the type to tell you how they’re soooooo glad to see you, and that, oh my GOD, aren’t the bathrooms just AWFUL today, and oh, wait, did you know about so-and-so a floor down? Well, there’s this long story they’re going to tell you about them, and you can’t escape.

And then, they invite you somewhere. And you don’t have a good excuse to avoid it. And you don’t know how to say no.

That’s a type of horror in and of itself. It’s the horror not of being scared, or being tricked, or being led to your doom, but the horror of dealing with things you’d rather not deal with. Of being perceived, put on the spot, made to answer when you’d rather do anything but. It’s the horror that permeates every awkward conversation and strange interaction you’ll have. It’s the horror of social anxiety.

Hey, don’t go anywhere — it’s not a pop psychology article, I swear. It’s more that there is an unfortunate phenomenon that we as humans are bound by so many social rules, obligations, and oddities that sometimes we end up trapped, caught up in something we cannot in any way avoid. 

That’s the horror I felt watching “Speak No Evil.” 

“Speak No Evil” is a Danish film made in 2022 that focuses on the strangeness of our proclivity to use social norms as hard-and-fast rules, and it’s a movie that was re-made and released by an American company on Sept. 13. (A Friday! How spooky!) The core of the story, regardless of the producer, is the same — a couple, on vacation, meets another, and is invited to come visit their home in the middle of nowhere. Upon arriving, the couple finds their hosts to be strange; unnerved, they attempt to extricate themselves from the situation, only to discover their hosts pushing societal obligations on them at every turn. At some point, it becomes impossible to leave without saying goodbye, and saying goodbye belabors itself to the point where nobody goes anywhere.

That’s the heart of both movies: the idea that fear can sometimes be so mundane and yet so crippling that our own instincts are smothered by it. In “Speak No Evil,” there are so many small problems that should have driven anyone away, but somehow, they just don’t matter. When you phrase them oddly and use the pressures and tricks that society affords us, it becomes increasingly difficult to amass those red flags into a coherent reason. 

“Speak No Evil” is social anxiety run amok, a story about what happens when we let our desire to be “polite company” take over our primal urges — in doing so, creates one of the most striking pieces of societal satire I’ve seen since Johnathan Swift suggested we eat babies. This joke was far less topical before the Presidential debate, but I stand by it regardless.

And then the Americans came and changed it all. The Danish version of the movie (spoilers by the way!) ends with the host couple simply murdering their visitors, stealing their child and cutting her tongue out for a forced adoption. When asked why, by a crying couple who have been forced to dig their own grave, the couple simply responds, “because you let me.” The family is subsequently stoned to death, walked to their grave like a very unsuspicious lamb to a cleverly disguised slaughter.

It’s horrifying. It’s murder — slow, deliberate, the sort that leaves a lasting impression on the audience. It makes “Speak No Evil” (Taylor’s Danish Version) a genuine piece of brilliant horror.

Tell me why the American version ends in a big ol’ shootout. Look, I bleed red, white, and blue just like the best of ‘em, but we gotta stop ending our flicks with guns. It’s giving us a bad rap. “Speak No Evil” (2024), while a brilliant movie, ends completely differently from its Danish counterpart. The same slow buildup, the same gradual boiling of the pot as the visiting couple begins to fear their hosts, culminates in a fight on the hosts property resulting in death, fire, and mayhem. It changes one of the fundamental parts of the story — the crushing, python-like grasp that societal norms have on a person — and replaces it with a cathartic destruction of those norms. Haven’t you ever wanted to snap? 

Well, “Speak No Evil” is about being able to, in its own twisted way. The visitors, confronted with the realization that their hosts are serial killers, fend them off, breaking every established rule and implied norm. They use everything they can at their disposal, from a Molotov cocktail (don’t ask), to an unused ketamine needle (don’t ask). It’s a realization of all those times we fantasized about jumping out of a window instead of talking to someone — a rejection of the idea that by sheer social manipulation, we can be forced into inaction.