Hush: En route vers l'enfer

better than expected British thriller about a mad man in a truck abducting girls. Zakes Abbot discovers this one night when he drive behind the Psycho's truck. is it better to leave it be? or get involved? hell soon find out the consequences of his decision. the last 20 minutes of the film , i found myself yelling at the screen saying "be quiet", "stupid woman" and "moronic dog". decent acting by the lead and superbly directing for first timer Mark Tonderai. the film could have easily be 30 minutes longer, especially since there was a few questions i wanted answered. the lack of these answers is the only reason i gave "Hush" a 7 in stead of an 8.

This movie was mediocre. It had some interesting parts, but after a while, it got a bit long winded. Essentially, a couple is on a trip. She feels that their relationship is going nowhere and that her boyfriend is not following through with any of his life plans. She is trying to tell him something and when she feels she can't get her message across, she parts ways with him. During the trip they he sees what appears to be a nude girl locked in the back of a semi truck. Where he and his girlfriend part ways, the truck turns up. The man realizes that his girlfriend has been kidnapped and sets off to find her and rescue her. He runs into a few pitfalls along the way, some drama and death ensues. It gets pretty typical. Not a bad movie, but no the best I've ever seen either.

I find it amazing how people get very critical about films which in some cases weren't advertised as big block busters. OK this isn't going to win any Oscars but hey its wasn't as bad as some people think. I do find these films frustrating sometimes when you dissect them and say well i wouldn't have done that but hey if that is the case then tell all those idiots who still swam with Jaws and still go to holiday camps. It had suspense and some good moments, i thought it was better than i was lead to believe and wouldn't recommend it but if you do hire it then you wont be too disappointed and just enjoy it for what it is a low budget film with some good moments.

From a pure enjoyment standpoint, the movie is fairly entertaining. From a technical standpoint, it's got a lot of issues. I had a hard time not focusing on them.

This movie is plagued with bad production. Right off the bat, after the opening title sequence, the opening scene with a car speeding down a highway is frozen and then starts. This is obviously an editing blunder.

There were some scenes which looked to be horribly edited in post. For instance, a scene in which the two main characters are speaking across a table. Normally in film or video, the focus shifts from one to the other as they are speaking. This is done in-camera during the filming process. Not here. The effect in this movie was obviously done in post and horribly at that. One half (almost exactly) is so blurred it's distracting. This causes the opposite affect it was used for in the first place; to place the viewers attention on the important subject at the time. A decent production would not have tried to fix this in post, it would have been re-shot. It seems like the footage was not viewed until the whole movie was shot.

Here's a suggestion, get a tripod! There are times when a scene calls for the hand held shaky look, but not during a seated conversation! I was getting a headache. Terrible.

Someone else commented on the lack of sound during a point in the movie. This was definitely not the time or place to try an effect like that. I seriously doubt it was on purpose.

The movie also suffered from doing a very poor job at explaining why or how things were happening, for instance the guard scene. Did I miss something? This reminds me of a decent school type project. Beyond that, it doesn't hold production value for a serious movie.

By the way, this movie's description makes it sound an awful lot like Steven Spielbergs DUEL. Is it a coincidence that HUSH has four letters in its title? I think not. Duel is much, much better.

Hush, which comes from ex British radio DJ Mark Tonderai (who has also done some small time writing and acting gigs in the past) is an example of the kind of film that excels in areas whilst disappointing and aggravating in others. Taking on the project as both writer and director, Tonderai succumbs to too many short-cut decisions during both tasks which results in an uneven, sometimes overly derivative and cumbersome picture, but also one that is very good at playing to its strengths. The resulting experience when watching Hush then is one of subtle engagement—there are times when you'll be annoyed at decisions made by characters fictional and non, yet this too often works in favour of the film. When taken as a simple thriller, Tonderai's directorial debut succeeds; it may not be the biggest most progressive outing for the genre but it's still got a certain conviction that allows it to hurtle on regardless; careless and somewhat bold.

The same can equally be said for the movie's protagonist who comes in the form of young adult Zakes Abbot (William Ash); an obnoxious, moaning git, basically. Doing his rounds along the M1 with his disgruntled girlfriend as he posts posters on service station bathrooms for some cash while he "works on his book", Zakes inevitably winds up on the wrong side of the road after he stumbles across a truck with a hostage in the back. After having a fight with girlfriend Beth (Christine Bottomley), both eventually go in separate direction whereupon Beth, predictably, goes bye-bye when the same truck stops in for a breather. From here on in, Zakes does the movie a large portion of justice by limiting his vocal contributions to mere screams as he strives to find his girlfriend and stop the maniac who has taken her captive.

Sound familiar? Well, yes, because it is. Countless movies deal with the same basic premise—some which work, some which don't. For all intents and purposes, Hush's story doesn't really work, unfortunately, but that doesn't exactly kill the feature. To director Tonderai's credit, the amount of suspense that is delivered over the course of the movie's ninety minute runtime is palpable. Particularly impressive as a result is the movie's final act which essentially acts as one extremely long sequence of chase between Zakes and his girlfriend's captor. There are some clever devices here and there that do help flesh the whole thing out, yet the basic enjoyment factor here is that pulse-pounding threat that Tonderai builds and builds throughout; it can be exciting, and therein lies one of only two highlights to Hush's palette.

The other highlight lies in the performance of William Ash who—although a little dubious when delivering some lines at the beginning of the feature—sells his fear amicably. For a movie such as this where the viewer's only real link into the psyche of this horror of sorts is through the central character that it's all happening against, Ash does a nice job of keeping that boat alive and breathing above water. This, in tow with Philipp Blaubach and Theo Green's contributions in the form of photography and music respectfully ensures that Hush is punctuated by a realist tone throughout which works well to its advantage.

Despite these areas where Tonderai manages to squeeze moments of suspense and engagement out of his otherwise tepid script however, Hush can be a flat and banal experience—most prominently during the movie's first act. Built upon a mountain of derivative clichés, ridiculous plot twists and dead-end sequences that go nowhere, the narrative that exists to propel the character of Zakes is unfocused and a little short on fresh ideas to the point where the guy's name is the only real original element inherent to it's existence. To this end, Hush irrevocably wastes the above strengths on such short-sighted laziness. Not only is it disappointing, but it's frustrating too. Somewhere within the murky excess of Tonderai's script lies a genuinely seamless experience where suspense is king and plot moves, but not erratically and without clear direction. Unfortunately however, such a movie never quite surfaces and instead, Hush concedes to being an interesting but irksomely forgettable mash of thrill with nil.

• A review by Jamie Robert Ward (http://www.invocus.net)