Director Christian Tafdrup’s psychological horror film Speak No Evil is set to have its world premiere in the Midnight Program at the Sundance Film Festival, which is now underway. In anticipation of the film’s premiere, a trailer has been released online and can be seen in the embed above.
Written by Tafdrup and his brother Mads Tafdrup (A Horrible Woman), this is Danish production centers on
on two families – one Danish, one Dutch – who meet while on holiday in Tuscany. When the free-spirited Dutch family extends an invitation to the more conservative Danish for a holiday weekend at their countryside home, the lure of a fun, quick getaway is too delightful to resist. But the Dutch hospitality quickly turns sour for the Danes as they find themselves increasingly caught in a web of their own politeness in the face of eccentric – and sinister – behavior.
Speaking with Variety, Christian Tafdrup described Speak No Evil – which marks his horror genre debut – as a “satirical horror movie”:
Satirical, because it revolves around ordinary people’s absurdly recognizable ways of behaving. A horror movie, because the film is dark, evil and willingly foul. I hope it will become both funny and terrifying. Among modern Western people I think there’s a tendency to make decisions based on a cultural dictation about how we should behave, rather than from our own natural judgment. You don’t want to be less than what you’re mandated, and your self-perception weighs heavier than the truth about who you really are. That is, a genuine human being, for better or for worse. We disguise ourselves, while we long to be authentic.”
Speak No Evil stars Morten Burian, Sidsel Siem Koch, Karina Smulders, and Fedja van Huêt. The film was produced by Profile Pictures’ Jacob Jarek, alongside OAK Motion Pictures in the Netherlands, with support from the Danish Film Institute, FilmFyn, and the Netherlands Film Production Incentive, with co-financing from DR and Nordisk Film Distribution.
Speak No Evil looks to me like it could be quite interesting. I won’t be watching movies as part of this year’s virtual Sundance festival, though, so hopefully we’ll hear a proper release date for this one soon.
Here’s an image from the film: