Hush

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.

'Hush' is a lot like 'The Strangers', except instead of strangers plural it's only one man, and instead of a husband and wife being terrorized it's a deaf and mute recluse. It's very tense and cleverly written bar a few cliché tropes that come with this kind of movie. It also has a minimal synth score, something I notice more and more horror movies are utilizing - 'You're Next', 'It Follows' - to give it an '80s classic slasher atmosphere. It's hard to even call it horror though as it offers far more thrills than actual scares. I was thoroughly satisfied watching this movie. It's constantly engaging, and that has a lot to do with the terrific performances of both the man and Maggie, and there are a few scenes that are genuinely depraved and chilling. It doesn't break any new ground, but following 'The Babadook' and 'It Follows', 'Hush' continues to reinspire the subtle, quiet corner of the genre and bodes well for the future of psychological thrillers. Highly recommended.

Real-life deaf people (without mental disorder) are not so clumsy. The script forced a "deaf helpless" but ended up leaving the protagonist without the other senses of the body. Any deaf person would pick up the vibrations of doors rattling, or reflections/shadows from someone nearby, smelling sweat. I almost liked it but I thought it was a bit of "pushed" agony.

'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.

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.