The original best horror movies of the decade, from the big-budget chills of Nope to the campy twists of Orphan: First Kill. Shudder endeavored to offer many of these horror movies a streaming home, with the site’s collection of releases offering everything from goofy monster movies to thoughtful psychological horrors. This included Speak No Evil, which stood out from the rest of the Shudder library for its odd premise and utterly disturbing execution.

Two years before the James McAvoy-led remake, European horror movie Speak No Evil prompted a flurry of mixed reactions. While many fans of weird horror praised it, it felt like just as many viewers took online with less-than-enthusiastic questions. The directorial effort from Danish filmmaker Christian Tafdrup, Speak No Evil’s nihilistic comedy of manners proved equally divisive when it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. While horror movies are notorious for twists, Speak No Evil's ending also presented a moral dilemma, taking the movie from sinister and creepy and turning it into a shocking and unsettling film that's generated conversation online ever since its release.

What Happens In Speak No Evil’s Ending

The Tone Of Speak No Evil Flips In The Final Act

A psychological horror movie, Speak No Evil seems more like a dark, unusually intense cringe comedy for much of its runtime. While indie horror movies like Terrifier use their distance from the mainstream to tell stories that would be too gory and explicit for mainstream cinemagoers, Speak No Evil takes the opposite approach. Most of Speak No Evil’s deliberately paced story is a bloodless comedy of manners that begins when the meek, weak-willed Bjorn meets the outspoken Patrick on vacation. Patrick charms Bjorn, so Bjorn accepts Patrick’s invitation to visit his home in the remote Dutch countryside.

The Danish family spends most of Speak No Evil uncomfortably ignoring repeated transgressions.

Bjorn’s wife Louise and child Agnes him on this trip and soon clash with Patrick’s strange, silent son Abel and his overly-familiar wife Karin. The Danish family spends most of Speak No Evil uncomfortably ignoring repeated transgressions, microaggressions, and unspoken boundary crossings — all of which come to a head in Speak No Evil’s shockingly bleak, unexpected twist ending.

Throughout the Shudder horror movie, Speak No Evil makes it increasingly clear that something is seriously wrong with the family. Patrick and Karin repeatedly make it clear that they don’t care about the discomfort of their guests. Gradually, these rude gestures escalate into outright abuse as Patrick manhandles his son Abel at a playground, verbally abuses Agnes and Abel when the kids mess up a dance routine, and watches Louise shower.

Eventually, Louise convinces Bjorn to leave with Agnes when she discovers her child sleeping in the same room as Patrick and a nude Karin, but their escape doesn’t go to plan. In a classic horror movie cliché, Speak no Evil's ending starts when Bjorn’s car breaks down, and he must look for help in the woods. When he gets back to his car, Patrick and Karin have taken Agnes and Louise hostage.

Does Agnes Survive In Speak No Evil?

Death May Have Been A Better End For The Child In Speak No Evil

Speak No Evil's ending reveals that Agnes survived, but she might wish she hadn’t. After Bjorn hears Patrick beating Abel, he sneaks outside to discover the boy’s dead body. He discovers Karin and Patrick had kidnaped Abel and cut out his tongue and that they are sadistic criminals who intend to do the same to his family.

When Bjorn finds Patrick with Louise and Agnes, he begs Patrick not to hurt them. Patrick tells him to do what he says and that his family will be unharmed. Bjorn and Louise watch helplessly as Karin cuts out Agnes’ tongue and takes the child away before Patrick drives them to an empty quarry. There, Patrick and Muhajid stone Louse and Bjorn to death.

Why Didn’t Bjorn Stop Patrick?

Bjorn's Politeness Doomed His Family

The history of horror cinema is filled with unanswered mysteries. However, the biggest questions from Speak No Evil's ending are more existential. While it is relatively believable that Bjorn and Louise might feel compelled not to mention the erratic behavior of their hosts for the first two acts of Speak No Evil, in the closing stretch, their inability to act rationally goes beyond belief. Most of Speak No Evil’s positive reviews cite Bjorn's politeness as his fatal flaw, stating that Bjorn’s overly permissive attitude eventually dooms him, Louise, and their child.

It's really as simple as it sounds once — Bjorn was too polite to stop Patrick. However, this explanation doesn’t add up. Most viewers can discern between normal social graces and magnanimity and Bjorn’s deep-seated inability to act in his own interest. Unlike fellow 2022 horror Nope’s ambiguous twist ending, Speak No Evil's ending offers very few alternate interpretations. Speak No Evil has a pretty obvious point to make — although not necessarily a good one.

What Speak No Evil’s Ending Really Means

The Controversial Horror Has A Mixed Message

In the world of Speak No Evil, grace and politeness are enough to doom a family of three to death. A small child is disfigured, another is murdered, and two adults are stoned to death because Bjorn is too afraid of conflict. Notably, Patrick is given a free . During an unbearably tense scene, he leaves the car running as he walks into the woods for a bathroom break. This leaves Louise and Bjorn able to access the keys and drive off if only they were willing to take a risk and fight back.

Inevitably, they don’t, and the movie hammers its transparent moral home. Despite its provocative horror scenes, Speak No Evil's ending reaffirms a fundamentally conservative worldview. Bjorn fails because he is not enough of a traditionally masculine hero at crucial moments, his politeness proves he is innately weak, while the other couple's cultural differences are all an act to victimize an upper-class family. And, ultimately, the groundbreaking 2022 horror Speak No Evil saw its characters die for the crime of simply being too nice, decent, and polite.

Why Director Christian Tadrdup Made Speak No Evil

Speak No Evil's Director Can Clearly Explain His Creative Process

Christian Tafdrup, the director, has explained his own take on the meaning of Speak No Evil's ending. He said the reactions to the movie changed based on which countries the audiences were from (via RogerEbert.com). He explained that German audiences were laughing and screaming, while in South Korea, they remained silent until the end but seemed to love the film. He also said there were people who told him he should be ashamed for creating a movie with an ending and twist like Speak No Evil's. However, he had a reason for the ending, and it all came down to society today.

“We were also working with ideas of political correctness. Your child is being babysat by a dark stranger, and you're afraid, but you don't want to seem racist, so you don't say anything."

To understand Tafdrup's intentions, it's important to look at the movie through the lens of his perspective as a Danish filmmaker. It should be noted that in this context, wherein the movie is about Danish and Dutch families, "dark" is in reference to a clearly foreboding and ominous presence like Karin's rather than an allusion to pigmentation or visual differences.

The point director Christian Tafdrup was making was that there are always monsters out there who will exploit the goodwill and cultural misunderstanding of others just as Patrick and — as per the babysitting mention — Karin do. In Speak No Evil's ending, this babysitter turns out to be Patrick’s murderous accomplice. For any parent, this knowledge, that they'd willingly left their child in the company of such obvious danger for fear of causing offense, would be an unthinkable nightmare.

This is an idea that Christian Tafdrup masterfully played here. Ultimately, for all the movie’s twists, Speak No Evil's ending is a screed against the perils of politeness and pacifism. "I did not want to explain why they did what they did. I didn't want to say, “Where are the police?” I wanted the story to symbolize evil in the world and how we react to it."

How Speak No Evil's Ending Was Received

Critics Loved It But Audiences Mostly Disliked The Ending

Speak No Evil received a lot of praise upon its release, especially on the film festival circuit. Christian Tafdrup won the award for Best Director Choice at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, and critics agreed, praising the story and satire the film offered. Rotten Tomatoes critics labeled it Certified Fresh, with an 84% positive score, although audiences were not as sold, with only a 55% Popcornmeter score.

One big reason the audience was not completely sold is the ending. One audience reviewer wrote, "Was tense throughout. However, I did not like the ending though. Was too bleak for my taste. Hope the remake changes the ending." However, there were others who appreciated what the ending attempted. One reviewer wrote, "Very uncomfortable. I didn't dislike it. The ending, however, I was not ready for. It's hard to watch. You've been warned."

As for professional critics, most know what to expect from the horror genre and praise what it is trying to do. Scott Tobias from The Reveal wrote, "Though Tafdrup takes the film to unfathomably (and gratuitously) grim places in the final third, Speak No Evil feels like a twisted modern fairy tale, one where the characters are lured into the deep, dark forest. There’s a moral to the story here, too." A.A. Dodd agreed, writing, "The closing stretch of Speak No Evil is a true dark night of the soul, harrowing and suffocatingly tense; it’s the stuff of hard horror."