Danish director Christian Tafdrup takes audiences on a horror-filled ride in his third directorial effort, Speak No Evil, and makes a case that “vacation friendships” should remain a fond snapshot in our memory, never to be revisited.

The story is about a Danish family holidaying in Tuscany who meets a family from the Netherlands, with whom they become friends. Months later, they reconnect when the Dutch family invites the Danes to their country home.

Actor-director Tafdrup is known for such movies as Awakening (2008), Parents (2016), and A Horrible Woman (2017), in which he also stars. He also had a recurring role in the Danish Netflix hit series, Borgen, and talks about how the premise originated for his film, currently hailed at The Sundance Film Festival as “the most gloriously unpleasant film you’ll see all year.”

“I’d been traveling a lot and although it didn’t go as wrong as it did in the movie, of course, I’ve been in these situations many times in my life,” Tafdrup says. “As a child with my parents we often met people from other countries abroad, and then we’d visit them in their own homes. It wasn’t like a nightmare, but it was not a pleasant experience, but we stayed. Once we got home, we had a feeling that we were just violating ourselves in the attempt to please those hosts.

“So, three years ago, I had a very similar experience to that of the characters in the movie. I was in Tuscany, with my girlfriend and our three-year-old daughter. We met a Dutch couple, and the guy’s name was Patrick,” he chuckles. “He was a little bit like the Patrick in our movie and we made friends with them. They had kids who played with our kids and then they invited us to their inn. My girlfriend and I looked at each other and said, ‘Should we go, should we not?’” he recalls. “But we decided not to go. It was then that I started imagining what could have happened if we actually went to Rotterdam to visit this little creepy Dutch couple,” he laughs. “I talked about it with my brother [Mads, whom he wrote the script with] and we imagined all these funny, but also scary situations that could have been. Then we decided, what if the worst thing that could happen actually did happen? So, we just started to write it as a horror film, partly based on own experiences and, of course, on free imagination.”

The film stars Morten Burian, Sidsel Siem Koch, Fedja van Huêtas, and Karina Smulders. Van Huetas, who plays Patrick says, “What I find interesting about the story is that it’s about social conventions. So, my character, along with Karin (Smulders), are testing the other couple. It’s about boundaries. We are so polite these days that we are not used to handling aggression anymore. And I played it like Patrick and Karin are not even human.”

The other couple, Bjorn (Burian) and Louise (Koch) are more than happy to connect with this seemingly gregarious, fun-loving couple with whom they appear to have a lot in common, including the age of their children.

Burian offers, “I could see a lot of myself in Bjorn. I know about behaving and being polite, and the idea of struggling with boundaries. I was really drawn to this story. It made me think, ‘Am I able to protect my family in the end? That was the trigger point for me.”

Tafdrup has enjoyed a long and successful career and hasn’t put a lot of focus into the horror genre. “I’m not a horror film nerd and I’m not familiar with a lot of horror films. I like the first part, the buildup, but then many of them become too crazy or they try to explain everything. I tried to keep the suspense going for as long as possible,” he says.

He was inspired by the realism of Get Out, as well as Midsommar, the 2019 Swedish film. “Mads and I wanted to make something without weapons, without locked doors, and without a creepy basement. Just a car outside,” he shrugs. “I wanted it to feel real.”

Tafdrup wasn’t interested in making a movie merely for thrills and chills. He wanted to make a sociopolitical statement. “I didn’t want to just scare. I wanted to make a statement about human nature, about life, about what is happening in society right now.”

Through his film, we are reminded that evil can lurk in the most everyday of circumstances. It also serves as a cautionary tale that our compulsion for politeness and our need for acceptance can get us into serious trouble, even danger.