Like Funny Games and Dogtooth, Speak No Evil is a psychological horror that explores the dark side of Scandinavian culture. It has a social commentary on highly polite Scandinavians who find it troublesome to stand up for their boundaries and lack basic primal instincts to survive adversities. World cinema has often shown realistic portrayals of crimes instigated by poverty in developing countries and the zeal of the protagonist to still survive amidst all the hardships. It contrasts with the hopelessness in the wealthy and developed suburbs of Scandinavia. The dichotomy should be a case study of how economic status affects the personality traits linked with traditional gender roles, sexual preferences, physical body formations, and primal survival instincts to live in a wretched society.
Speak No Evil deals with how living in a sheltered society can affect or minimize the traditional survival instincts of human beings. It is a slow-paced, intense, and sarcastic jibe at the highly polite Scandinavians who struggle to say no and build rigid boundaries to protect themselves from evil people. Also, a brilliant take on human’s struggle to hide their animalistic side to appear high and mighty. When people belong to a region where no crimes happen, their inner survival instincts to protect themselves and see strangers as a threat decreases. The world appears like a utopian dream. But, in the real world, humans can be far worse than animals even when all their needs are met.
Human Boundaries
It has a satirical take on the consequences of ignoring multiple red flags to maintain a good impact on strangers. The film is a mockery of human’s hunger for validation while maintaining their diplomacy to the extent that they ignore their gut instincts. It is also a caution tale of how people take advantage of niceness when you don’t draw a rigid boundary. The constant violation of personal space can affect your mental health. The couple Bjorn, Louise, and their daughter meet another couple Abel, Karin, and their mute son on a vacation.
Abel and Karin slowly violate the personal boundaries of the couple, which generally concerns their daughter Agnes. Bjorn and Louise keep ignoring their domination over Agnes. Their possessiveness starts increasing. Abel and Karin slowly start deciding where Agnes will sleep and whether she is going out. All this unusual dominance first startled the parents, but they prioritized their good guest act over the child’s safety. The horror of ignorance is much more unsettling than the protagonists, who abide by all the wrong decisions in low-budget slasher flicks.
Survival instincts in Speak No Evil
In the Swedish film Funny Games, the family welcomes the suspicious neighbor who turns out to be a psychopath and keeps them in captivity in their own house. The parents fail to protect their kids. The despair and willpower of the parents to survive fade away after their son’s death. When the protectors fail to bring their instincts into action, it causes a sense of nihilistic atmosphere where a weak soul is vulnerable around their potential abusers.
In animal kingdoms, every species protect its offspring from the most powerful in the food chain. Humans are also biologically programmed to protect their children. However, Scandinavian society has become far more civilized than the rest of the world, as their survival instincts do not come much in use. The country is known for parking baby’s prams in without any supervision. A society that works on a trust system lacks corruption. When people from these countries come out of their urban utopia, they lack the street smartness to tackle every kind of person in the world.
Politeness and Pacifism
Humans live on validation and pleasing other humans to belong. There is a fear of rejection and loneliness in humans, so refusing certain gestures comes as an act of courage or arrogance. Speak No Evil satirically emphasize the power of saying no to protect your sanity. People pleasers are often a target for control and exploitation by toxic individuals or organizations. They work as a host for parasites to take over. The extent of following social obligations can have a negative impact. People will continue to manipulate and take advantage of those without firm boundaries.
In the film, the couple lost their kids and their own lives in the fear of not violating the emotions of strangers. The husband discovers the secret that the strangers have a pattern of inviting families, killing them, abducting their kids, pretending as their own, and eventually killing them. Even after several weird incidents, the couple disobey the red flags. The family’s bad decisions are a social commentary on the moral obligation of courtesy.
Atmospheric Horror in Speak No Evil
The film does not run on jump scares, but the slow pace of eerie situations is equivalent to skin-crawling discomfort. Scandinavian psychological thrillers like funny games, dogtooth, and goodnight mommy successfully create similar agitation. When humans behave beyond socially obligatory acts, it creates judgment, confusion, and a threat to other humans. When we watch humans not acting how they are supposed to, it creates an unsettling fear of the unpredictable next move and how we are ready to respond. As a spectator, the situation of a person trapped among unknown people in an unfamiliar place creates fear of horrifying possibilities and the limited probability of escape.
Therefore, when the protagonists hold on to wrong decisions, it enrages the viewer as they put themselves in the spotlight and contemplate how they would have handled the situation. The character in slasher thrillers and low-budget horror are infamous for their wrong decisions until the final girl escapes the killer. But, in reality, the antagonist always wins. The realism in Eden Lake destroyed the final girl trope and is considered one of the most nihilistic endings. In Speak no evil, the wrong decisions made by the family were a combination of realism and satire.
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