Danish director Christian Tafdrup (seen above, what a babe!) who made the 2022 original
Speak No Evil -- a film I consider a horror masterpiece (
here is my review from when it screened at Sundance that year) --
has spoken out now that he's seen the remake starring James McAvoy, and his words are... incredibly similar to what I said in
my review of the remake earlier this week. He was not happy! Now there are spoilers for the endings of both movies in what he says, so if you haven't seen them I suggest not reading this. And also I suggest you go watch the original movie right now -- it's easy to access, it's streaming on Shudder and rentable everywhere else. Anyway a hearty hear hear to all he says:
"I don’t know what it is about Americans, but they are brought up for a heroic tale, where the good must win over the bad, and this version of the film cultivates that,” Tafdrup complained. He went on to say that the changes that were made to the film made it feel “less dangerous,” and more sanitized for American consumption. "When I saw the film yesterday, I could see that they would never succeed with a film where the characters are stoned to death, as they do in our film. These people [in the U.S. version] must fight for their family and defeat the bad guys […] It is a kind of happy ending, and it is so deep in their culture that America must be able to handle it all." Comparing audience reactions, Tafdrup said he witnessed audiences leaving the remake “who were completely over-enthusiastic and clapped, laughed and whooped. It was like being at a rock concert” while he recalled how “people…left my film traumatized.”
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When i heard they were filming a remake, i KNEW the original ending would be changed.
Of course; this is standard with American remakes of bleak, uncompromising foreign movies, and as an American, I'm not sure I entirely object. Nor do I blame Hollywood: films like Chinatown and Seven will always be the exception coming from a country that has "the pursuit of happiness" written into one of its founding documents. For example: I can appreciate the artistry, clever construction, and profundity of a movie like George Sluzier's 1988 Dutch-French production The Vanishing, but oh my god what a nightmare of a scenario: it stayed in my mind and put me in a funk for days after seeing it, an ingenious Chinese box of a movie. I never want to see it again. When Sluzier did an English language Hollywood remake five years later with Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock, I knew before I read the first review that there was no way they would keep the original ending or tone. 20th Century Fox would not have distributed it. I certainly didn't want to see it, even with the new and improved requisite upbeat ending. Director Christian Tafdrup and his attitudinal cousin, Michael Haneke are accomplished story tellers of integrity and rigor, but they are also sadists who want to punish their audiences for their hypocrisy and cruelly stomp on their illusions. Both of them are auteurs as cerebral Stanley Kowalskis, and us movie-goers are so many Blanche DuBoises.
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