Hush

'Hush' is a fast-paced modern slasher flick with a twisted take on the genre. Well, the twist here is that the lead protagonist is deaf and mute from her teens and the director-writer combo of Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel (who also happen to be husband-wife in real life), places this character in a stuck-up situation where a killer is on the prowl and all odds are stacked against her. Questions start piling up but a good thirty minutes into the film, the viewer is given enough leads to estimate where the film is headed.

A film such as this, where the entire scenario revolves around a minimalist location, one feels inclined to applaud director Flanagan's knack for not making the film look like yet another typical home-invasion flick. The protagonist Maddie's inability to speak or hear is put to good effect in the screenplay. I won't spoil those brilliantly written and choreographed scenes in this review, because that is exactly what puts this flick a few notches above the rest in the genre. Equally inventive and enthralling are those scenes where Maddie's imaginative capability is put to test.

The cast (that comprises of just four characters, out of which the film revolves majorly around two!) is adequate as well, and lends ample support to the overall mainstay of the flick. Flanagan's directorial skills, which looked rather unimpressive in Absentia (2011), after which he made a notable Oculus (2013), has considerably improved over the years, all the while sticking to modest production expenditure. Aided in writing by his wife Kate Siegel, the couple seem poised to astonish us yet again this year in the sequel to the strictly sub- par Ouija (2014).

Hush is a pleasant surprise amongst the shitload of low-budget slasher garbage that is handed out to us every now and then. It is by all means worth a watch for thriller buffs.

Mike Flanagan is one for two in my books. His first big film was Absentia, which was a slow boring mess of a film. Interesting ideas, but nothing much else was going on in the film. His second output was a vast improvement, Oculus. Flanagan showed promise and improvement, which made me interested in seeing what else he had for future projects. Well, he has two films coming out in 2016 and I want to talk about Hush, his take on the home invasion sub-genre.

Home invasion films have been done to death. Some are great (You're Next), some are tolerable (The Strangers) and some are downright terrible (When A Stranger Calls, 2006). So how does one make their home invasion film stand out from the rest? There has to be some twist on the story to make it memorable. You're Next was a great deconstruction of the genre itself and had the heroine be a survival specialist. The twist Hush brings us lies in the fact that our protagonist if completely deaf.

The key element that makes or breaks this film is the sound design. I felt like the crew pulled it off and we have a solid thriller on our hands here. Maddie is a deaf author and she has secluded herself in a house in the woods to write her next book. Problems arise when someone outside her house decides to play a deadly game with Maddie and know she has to keep him out and escape alive. Again, this is a simple premise that is only made interesting by the fact that she is deaf and how the filmmakers decide to handle that aspect of the story.

While the film does inevitably go down routine routes with the story, Flanagan does so with skill and finesse. Multiple times throughout the film we are in Maddie's shoes as Flanagan completely mutes the audio. We see the terror happening behind her, but we cannot hear it. He can be entering the house at any point and we will not know. Flanagan manages to seep the viewer in suspense throughout the whole film and while there are some gory and squeamish scenes, he doesn't rely on them. They feel real and earned. Looking back at the film there are multiple sequences where I was taken back or had a huge grin on my face with the ingenuity of it all.

People will ultimately try to find inconsistencies with how the film handles the deaf aspect. I had maybe one issue myself, but can look past it for the benefit of the enjoyment I ultimately had because of the film. With a small cast of only four people and hardly any dialogue (maybe 15 minutes total?) Hush is a well crafted film that earns a viewing from anyone who likes this genre.

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.

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

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.