Movie Review: Hush (2016)
Hush is one of the best horror movies of recent years, and certainly one of the great successes of Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions. It’s very suspenseful, and does such an excellent job of putting you in the protagonist’s perspective.
Kate Siegel plays Maddie Young, a deaf author that can read lips living in the woods trying to write a second book. We get a lot of information about her character hinted at, with an ex-boyfriend and a family that wants her to come back home, and I guess she’s from the city originally, having moved out to the country to concentrate on her writing.
We also meet her neighbor, Sarah, played by Samantha Sloyan. They have a good relationship, and Sarah tries to communicate with her through sign language, despite Maddie insisting that she can read her lips. While they are talking to each other, Maddie’s fire alarm goes off, and Sarah comments on how loud it is. Maddie explains that it needs to be, because then she can feel the vibrations. This all comes back later in the movie, in some effective and not forced reincorporation. Sarah invites Maddie over to watch a movie with her boyfriend, to which Maddie politely declines.
Later that night, Sarah struggles to Maddie’s window, screaming and crying, banging on the glass to try and get her friend’s attention. She goes unnoticed, however, and is hit with an arrow in the back.
Maddie is on video chat with her friend or maybe her sister or something, and her friend noticed something moving behind her. We see that the masked killer has taken her phone, now understanding himself to be dealing with a deaf potential victim. She gets photos sent to her from her phone of her on her computer, and naturally gets freaked out. She locks herself in the house, and the killer slashes her tires and cuts the power.
Maddie writes on her glass door with her lipstick that she won’t tell anyone, stressing that she hasn’t seen his face, and that her boyfriend is coming home soon. In perhaps the most haunting scene of the movie, the killer then removes his mask, making her promise void. He then shows her the body of her friend, taunting her, and asking if she reads lips, to which she nods.
I haven’t seen a lot of home invasion movies, but I understand they all more or less have the same plot. The gimmick here of course is that she’s deaf, but director Mike Flanagan elevates it beyond a simple gimmick and uses it as an effective tool for telling a story. The protagonist understands that she is at a disadvantage at every step of the way because he can hear her and she cannot hear him. She also tries to use this to her advantage, using her car alarm to try and distract him.
She climbs onto the roof after trying to escape through a window and is hit in the leg with a crossbow arrow. She’s able to put up a good fight, earlier stabbing him in the arm with the back end of a hammer. One of the best things about this movie is how much pain both main characters go through. It all feels real and is acted very well. Every action has consequences.
Maddie knocks the killer off the roof and manages to take his crossbow, climbing back into the house. She tries to figure out how to load it and work it, but it’s clear that’s going to be difficult for her. Sarah’s boyfriend John (Michael Trucco) shows up, looking for Sarah. The killer meets him, pretending to be a police officer that had responded to a call, coming to after having been knocked out by an unseen assailant.
The killer borrows John’s phone to pretend to call for backup, and John gets suspicious when an earring belonging to either Maddie or Sarah falls out of his pocket, and he is hesitant to give back the phone. He eventually does, and John makes his doubts clear when he asks who made the call, considering Maddie couldn’t have, given that she’s deaf and mute. The killer explains that it must have been his girlfriend that made the call.
John observes the slashed tires and explains that he thinks Maddie may have a spare key as a way to lure him off the porch. John takes a rock, ready to defend himself and save the day.
As viewers, we sort of know what’s going to happen, but the scene is so drawn out that you can’t help but feel the tension. In fact, how this scene ends is a bit surprising, given that it’s Maddie that accidentally ruins it, by trying to get his attention by banging on the door. John is distracted, and is stabbed in the neck. Dying, he still puts up a fight, until he is killed. The killer remarks about how he would have had no chance to beat John in hand-to-hand combat given his size. It’s a tremendous scene and shows the extreme disadvantage of Maddie very well. In his dying breath, John mouths the word “run” to Maddie, and Maddie imagines herself doing so, concluding that she ultimately would not get far, given her injured leg. She knows she cannot run; she knows she cannot hide. She knows she will bleed to death soon. She has to fight.
With the killer about to kill Maddie’s cat, Maddie shoots him in the shoulder with the crossbow. She runs back inside, being pursued, and drops her last arrow. Reaching for it, the killer shuts the door on her wrist and stomps on her hand. She manages to pull her hand back inside and locks the door.
With the killer now breaking in, Maddie types a description of the killer on her laptop, saying that she died fighting. She runs to the bathroom with a knife. The killer comes up behind her, and talks aloud, saying he thinks she is holding out on him, and he wants to make her scream. Feeling her hair move from his breath, she turns around and stabs him in the leg and runs.
Maddie sprays him with insecticide and sets the incredibly loud and brigh fire alarm off. He overcomes her, though, and while being strangled on the ground, she grabs a corkscrew and stabs him through the throat, killing him. She takes back her phone and dials 911 and the movie ends with police lights arriving while she pets her cat.
Hush is an absolute rollercoaster of a movie, and I really can’t say enough positive about it. Mike Flanagan has created an incredibly well crafted and suspenseful movie. It’s interesting to note that this movie was distributed by Netflix, which given some recent bad movies that Netflix has distributed or produced (The Cloverfield Paradox, Bright, Mute), this movie lends some credibility to the streaming service. Netflix also distributed Flanagan’s follow-up effort, Gerald’s Game, which, like Hush, got good reviews, though I’m not the biggest fan. I’ll review that one if I ever see it a second time, for sure.
All the performances are good, especially Kate Siegel in the lead, who cowrote the movie with Flanagan, who she’s actually married to. They make a good team.
Rating: 8/10
