Alix West Lefler, the child actor best known for roles on Riverdale and The Good Nurse, has been cast as a supporting lead in Blumhouse’s upcoming Speak No Evil. The movie, a remake of a Danish thriller, is expected to arrive in theaters in August 2024, and will also star James McAvoy (X-Men: First Class), Mackenzie Davis (Terminator: Dark Fate), and Scoot McNairy (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice). According to Deadline, who first reported the casting last week, the original film, titled Gæsterne, centered on family invited for a weekend at an idyllic country house — a dream holiday that warps into a snarled psychological nightmare.
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Deadline reports that Lelfer will portray the role of Agnes, the daughter of Louise (Davis) and Ben (McNairy).
Gæsterne wasn’t exactly a box office juggernaut — it earned around $650,000 in Europe against a $3 million budget, and didn’t get a U.S. theatrical release. But fans and critics loved it, and the movie sold to Shudder, the horror-centric streaming platform, which likely generated more than enough money to pay themselves back with. Having the movie go global and get a Blumhouse remake was also likely good for filmmaker Christian Tafdrup, who wrote and directed the movie. Tafdrup is mostly an actor, and this is his third film as a director and his first genre film, so the accolades likely helped raise his visibility as an actor as well as convincing studios that he can work in the profitable horror genre.
Written and directed by James Watkins (The Woman in Black), Speak No Evil is being produced by Jason Blum for Blumhouse, with Paul Ritchie, Christian Tafdrup, Jacob Jarek, and Bea Sequeira on board as executive producers.
Here’s how Google Play describes the original film — a synopsis that gives a bit more detail than the Deadline one:
On a vacation in Toscana, a Danish family instantly becomes friends with a Dutch family. Months later, the Danish couple receives an unexpected invitation. It doesn’t take long before the joy of reunion is replaced with misunderstandings.
