Pas un bruit

The slasher genre was at it's peak in the 80's, when the 90's came it began to struggle and in this guys opinion it's never fully recovered. Sure every once in a while a high profile slasher movie pops up but the interest never seems to last.

I'd say a primary reason is that they're all the same but that could be said about a lot of horror sub-genres.

Here we have the story of a mute/deaf author who lives out secluded in the forest and you guessed it she falls foul of a masked killer.

The fact she's deaf actually adds more of an element to the movie than you'd imagine and though Hush suffers from the same Slasher tropes as every other it manages to stay fresh regardless.

Well shot, well written and well acted by both little known leads I came away from Hush very satisfied. Sure it's nothing revolutionary but it didn't need to be, it's a demonstration that slashers still have life left in them.

The Good:

The pets role in the film

Some well crafted moments

Both leads were excellent

The Bad:

Slasher tropes

Hush combines the familiarities of the home-invasion sub-genre with the unpredictability of its interesting premise. Kate Siegel plays deaf author Maddie with persisting conviction and aids in mining the story's nailbiting potential. It doesn't surpass every trope there is within its category, but it sprinkles plenty of "oh, how will this turn out?" questions across its short runtime to keep you on your toes.

The film started off quite well from the outset, with a nice setup. Having the main character be deaf is interesting, but unfortunately it doesn't pay off very well. There's not much buildup to the game of cat and mouse that makes up the bulk of the story and so the viewer is thrust into the action in a way that seriously lessens its impact. There are flashes of promise in the first ten or so minutes but after that it's a fairly clichéd survival horror that doesn't offer anything spectacular. Some fleeting moments of tension and shock make it worth a one time watch if you're curious, but don't go into it with high expectations.

A chess game of suspense involving a deaf girl and a serial killer locked outside her home in the woods.

It sounds like a cliché with a twist, and it is, but it's a really good cliché with a twist.

For a start the premise that the lead character Maddie, the deaf writer, who is home alone after a relationship break up, opens up a box of plot twists and devices that are unfamiliar in their familiarity.

Second, Maddie, (Kate Siegel) dominates the movie, even though it's essentially a double hander, with a superbly sympathetic performance that never gets you shouting "don't do that", as is common in this genre.

The tension does not let up from start to finish (and it's only 82 minutes so doesn't outstay its welcome) as the masked invader tries to outwit Maddie and vice versa.

The temptation might have been to take Maddie's disability and, like with Audrey Hepburn's blindness in Wait Until Dark, use it to her advantage somehow; but that does not transpire. It's actually her skills as a writer (she is completing her latest crime novel when the would be assassin strikes) that gives her some traction in what should be a one-sided battle.

This is an intelligent, well paced and well shot, low budget slasher movie, but on a higher plane.

Let us start with the fact that this is not a horror movie. It's a thriller, with some interesting unusual aspects, as well as a few cringe-worthy flaws (in character logic, as the case always seems to be).

So what makes this movie stand out and feel almost fresh? The obvious first is that our protagonist is deaf-mute. Not being an expert on deaf people, I still believe this was played quite consistently to the movie's credit. It is interesting to occupy the head space of someone missing such an important sense in a frightful situation.

Another thing I noticed is the total lack of jump scares. There isn't a single jump-scare in the movie, which only further distances Hush from being a horror movie. In fact the usual creep factor as a whole is kept to a minimum. It quickly becomes a cat-and-mouse kind of battle of wits more than anything else, which I found a pleasant surprise, despite being more of a horror fanatic.

The third curious thing is that from the get go it's made clear that the killer is very much human. We don't know what his motivations are, he's just out to kill and doesn't give much of a s*** about anything else but his upper hand. He doesn't have much of a plan and has to improvise, as does our protagonist to survive.

I found the thrill in this movie to be more intellectual than primal. The gore is neither profuse nor lacking, it's there when it's needed. It's well shot, acted, directed and edited, considering the modest budget, and doesn't overstay its welcome. I'd recommend it for a rainy evening if you want to see the thriller genre try something new.