Sundance: Sound Designing Social Horror for ‘Speak No Evil’

Danish director Christian Tafdrup’s disturbing film Speak No Evil – which premiered in the Sundance 2022 Midnight category – tells the tale of a mild-mannered Danish family who visits an offbeat Dutch family they had recently met on vacation. The houseguests' stay turns from friendly to frightening, with an ending that's dubbed 'shocking' by Sundance audiences. Here, sound designer/re-recording mixer Marco Vermaas talks about building intensity through the film's soundscape and what it was like to sound design that vivid ending.

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Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of Sundance Institute

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Fans of horror should keep an eye out for Speak No Evil from director Christian Tafdrup. It recently premiered at Sundance 2022 in the Midnight category, and was picked up by AMC’s premium streaming service Shudder.

Like Ari Aster’s Midsommar, Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil explores the extremes of being too accepting of social differences to deadly effect. In Speak No Evil, a polite Danish family meets an affable Dutch family while on vacation. They hit it off, so when the Dutch family invites the Danish family over for a stay, they accept. But the situation spirals from welcoming to what the f**k, with an ending that makes a lasting impression on viewers.

Here, award-winning sound designer/re-recording mixer Marco Vermaas in Amsterdam talks about working with Tafdrup to create an unsettling undertone that sets the stage for the final horrifying act, finding the appropriate noises for Abel (who was born without a tongue), building off-screen events through sound, and more!

SPEAK NO EVIL Trailer (2022) Psychological Horror

What were director Christian Tafdrup’s initial ideas for how to use sound as a storytelling tool in Speak No Evil? After reading the script, what were some of your initial ideas for sound on this film?

Sound designer/re-recording mixer Marco Vermaas

Marco Vermaas (MV): After reading the script and talking to Christian it became clear that the film needed an undertone of something unsettling. In scenes that seemed ‘normal,’ we tried to come up with ideas to undermine or offset this normality so the audience would get a slightly unpleasant feeling.

As the film would progress on its journey to the underworld, the sound would become stronger and more dynamic, more like a horror soundtrack.

This film seems like a gradual arc from ‘normal’ into ‘madness.’ In terms of sound, how did you support this? How do you use sound to help emphasize that the situation is becoming more perilous for the house guests?

Director Christian Tafdrup

MV: After picture-lock, this idea of the slow progression was still there, but Christian and editor Nicolaj Monberg decided that the film needed some very strong unsettling music cues right from the start, and throughout the film. This was picked up very well by composer Sune Kølster, and resulted in a much stronger unsettling feeling from the very start of the film.

In sound, we responded with stronger, more pronounced sound design. The nature and city ambiances became denser, the sound effects more pronounced. This worked very well. And within this new idea, we started looking for possibilities to create more dynamics to follow the drama. We tried to make the Italian tourist village sound as normal and happy as possible, and then later, when sleepless Bjørn is standing on his balcony in the silent night, we made the night crickets increasingly dense and loud.

It became an interesting process of give-and-take between music and sound design, where sometimes sound design would assume the role of music score, and the other way around. Some moments where music completely takes over and all sound is absent in an unexpected way, still strike me as the strongest in the film.

What was your approach to the gore in Speak No Evil? Is it over-the-top? Or more subdued? What did you feel was most impactful for this film?

MV: Towards the end of the film, all normality is overtaken by more grotesque scenes and there we used more grotesque sound effects, of course. We said goodbye to reality and approached it more as an opera. Patrick’s car sounds huge and dangerous, the nature ambience can drop to dead silence, and the violence is super loud.

There’s one horrific scene that actually took me a while before I was able to watch it in a professional way and study the possibilities for sound.

There’s one horrific scene that actually took me a while before I was able to watch it in a professional way and study the possibilities for sound. And even in this scene, the gore is quite minimalistic and short. What is much more important is the idea of what is happening – and the screaming. We did put a lot of effort into getting the screaming right; those were intense ADR sessions.
 

What was your favorite scene in terms of sound design? What was the most fun for you to build?

MV: There’s this very long scene in the night when Bjørn slowly discovers the truth. Many actions are taking place off-screen, so it becomes kind of a radio-play that we – together with Bjørn – are listening to. That is a very Coen-Brothers-like approach, where the story is told through sound only. This is very hard but also very nice and rewarding to work on as a sound designer.

What was the most challenging aspect for sound in the film?

MV: The sound of the boy-without-a-tongue was very hard to get right. After the scene where he shows his wide-open mouth to Bjørn, he is disturbing the cozy get-together of the grownups by loudly moaning from his bed. This moaning sound, which should sound weird and unsettling but also sound like a boy, took a long time to get right. We had many children and women in the studio, all doing their best version of this moaning. Actually, the sound of the boy that ended up in the film is, from scene to scene, from different actors.

In terms of sound, what stands out for you in Speak No Evil?

MV: I think the use of music, as it was conceived in the picture edit, is one of the strongest assets of this film. Composer Sune Kølster was very nice to work with. Together with Christian, we decided up to the final mix what cues we would use and which we would remove to let the sound design do its work. This is the best a sound designer and re-recording mixer can wish for.
 

A big thanks to Marco Vermaas for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Speak No Evil and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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