“Speak No Evil ”director and cast explain why they based the movie on the terrifying Danish original

Writer-director James Watkins and stars James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, and Scoot McNairy on reimagining Christian Tafdrup’s 2022 Danish original.

Adapting foreign horror films for American audiences can be a little scary — and not in a fun way.

For every well-received reimaging (see 2002’s The Ring, a remake of Hideo Nakata's 1998 film Ringu), there seem to be twice as many misses (see 2006’s The Wicker Man, 2015’s Martyrs, 2013’s Oldboy, and many, many more.)

So, when James Watkins decided to write and direct a remake of Christian Tafdrup’s Danish horror film Speak No Evil — just two years after its release, no less — he, much like the family at the center of the film, was entering into dangerous territory. But Watkins, who already found box office success in a similar situation with 2012’s The Woman in Black, itself the second screen adaptation of Susan Hill's 1983 novel of the same name, saw a chance to flesh out the themes presented in the original, ideally without spoiling its legacy.

Related: Speak No Evil's James McAvoy compares his terrifying character to toxic masculinity king, Andrew Tate

“I think it was seeing the original and loving the original, but also seeing the opportunity to make something that was my own and to take it into a slightly different musical key, I suppose, with the themes and the setup,” he tells Entertainment Weekly of his motivations. “I thought there were things that I could run with and have a conversation with that were interesting.”

Both films follow the same basic setup: two couples, each with a young child, become friendly on vacation, and after they return to their normal lives, one invites the other to visit their home. Extreme awkwardness ensues as the quieter, more reserved couple (played by Scoot McNairy and Mackenzie Davis in the remake) struggles to advocate for themselves in the face of their gregarious new friends’ (James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi) increasingly aggressive behavior. Before long, social discomfort gives way to outright terror as the host family reveals their true intentions.

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“It's a great film; it's why we wanted to remake it,” McAvoy, who stars as the charismatic but sadistic Paddy, says of the 2022 original. “But I think it's incumbent upon the adaptation to do something different from the original. You can't just remake it. And, in fact, I don't really understand the term ‘remake.’ I think that when I do Macbeth on stage, I'm not remaking Macbeth. Macbeth has been done a thousand gazillion times. It'll be done a thousand gazillion times more.… 'Revivals,' that's what we call it in theater.”

Fortunately, unlike a director putting on Macbeth, Watkins was able to speak with the author of the material he was adapting — and even got advice on how to handle the inevitable criticisms. “Obviously, I wanted to be respectful and spoke to Christian about his film, but he was like, ‘You've got to make your own movie, and you've got to reconcile yourself to the people who might love the original movie and might not love yours,’” Watkins explains. “But at the same time, it's treating any story on its own merits and it's not trying to second guess any of that but to look at the story and go, ‘I see these characters I'm changing. I want to relocate this to a country I know with a cultural specificity that I know. English people and Americans react very differently than Danes. And so, immediately the DNA, the bones, the blood of the movie start to change.”

Related: Speak No Evil ending explained: What happened to Bjørn, Louise, and Agnes?

“I think it's such a cool idea and it can kind of be reproduced infinitely,” Davis adds. “You just get a different set of couples from different places, and it's the same stimuli in the experiment, but the lab rats are going to respond differently, and the ending is going to be different every time because of what cultural norms and observances they're bound by. I think that's a very cool thing.”

When casting his colony of lab rats, Watkins knew he needed a villain who could swing from charming to terrifying in an instant. From the beginning, he says, “I was only looking for James McAvoy, and I'm not lying.” Not only was he Watkins’ first choice, but he was also the only actor they asked to play the part. “The reason why we wanted James was because it's quite subtle, it's quite hard to walk that line, the duality of the character between him being really charming and magnetic and also, at some points, being devilish. Even the look in his eyes, in the twinkle of it, is it impish or is it devilish? I knew with James there was an actor who had the subtlety to be able to negotiate that path.”

McAvoy signed on without having seen the original, and he's not particularly interested in how they stack up against each other. “I'm not making this film to be compared, because I'm not making this film for the people who've seen the original,” he says. “If they want to watch it, I think they'd find it quite an interesting and maybe a fun, satisfying experience to watch for the differences and then judge which is better. That could be an interesting thing. But really, we're not making it for connoisseurs of film who want to watch multiple versions. You're making it for the people who haven't even seen the original as well.”

Related: James McAvoy reflects on his physical transformation into 'bestial and animalistic' Speak No Evil villain

He’s since seen the original 2022 version and “really enjoyed my experience.” He adds, “I thought what James [Watkins] said was really interesting: With the framework that this story provides, you can put people in different parts of the world in these social situations and the way they react to them could be very different.”

Check out the very different way McNairy and Davis’ characters react to McAvoy’s twisted plans for them in Watkins’ Speak No Evil, in theaters on Friday.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.