I’ve got more years behind me than before me. I don’t have enough time left on this planet to watch yet another film or limited television series where a powerful white man terrorizes a woman (either solo or with family in tow) for an hour and a half. This realization came to me when I was about halfway through 2024’s Speak No Evil, the Americanized version of a popular Danish horror film. The fact that it took me two or three months to finally finish it speaks to my weariness.
Don’t we live in a world where that kind of POS has been granted far too much power, anyhow? I don’t need him as the primary figure of my entertainment orientated escapes.
Granted, the more salacious side of my gayness wickedly sparked at this project’s midpoint visual of a beefed up James McAvoy stripping down to his black briefs for a swim. Sitting through the demented machinations of his character was another story altogether, though.
Of course, I might have taken more interest if the hinted at attraction between McAvoy’s Paddy and Scoot McNairy’s Ben had been more fully realized. While calculatedly setting a trap for Louise (Makenzie Scott) and her daughter, Alex (Alix West Lefler), Paddy makes off with the patriarchal side of that family unit, driving him into the woods for some manly bonding.
The song that Paddy chooses to accentuate their macho excursion, though, is The Bangles’ ultra-romantic Eternal Flame. That tune becomes a central sonic focus of the project, making viewers – or at least this one – wonder if director/co-writer James Watkins was subtly hinting at something a bit more lavender in Paddy’s nature.
But, ultimately, this twisted celluloid excursion soon does a forward freefall into Paddy’s deliriously violent attack upon Louise, Ben and Alex. All subtle nuances in character are swept aside for red faced, eye bulging mania.
The corporate, common line quality of this filmmaking is frustrating in it’s predictability. We definitely don’t need a mainstream, studio supported look at a dangerous homosexual – particularly in this politic climate. But turning Paddy into a sexually fluid manipulator of all who come into his path would have definitely given this film a fresh boost of life, turning a tried and true maniacal monster into something a little more joyfully perverse. This would have also taken some of the heat off of the basic, misogynistic notion of a woman and her child facing danger from yet another deluded, over privileged man.
Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
Big Gay Horror Fan 