Runtime:
81 minutes
Release
Date: April 8, 2016
Rating:
R
Director:
Mike Flanagan
Maddie
Young is the author of a best selling book who lives alone in the
middle of the woods and is deaf. Her nearest neighbor, Sarah, comes
over early in the night after reading her book and to talk about how
she plans to take a new ASL class and wants her boyfriend John to
join her. After Sarah heads home for the night, Maddie settles down
and struggles to work on her next book. She also receives a few phone
calls from Craig who we learn was her boyfriend up until a year ago.
While
cleaning up the mess she made earlier in the night while cooking,
Sarah frantically rushes to her door and finding it locked, beats
against the door with her hands. When that fails to grab her friend's
attention, she tries screaming. An arrow comes out from nowhere,
pierces her chest, and she screams some more. An unknown man in a
white mask comes out of the woods, attacks Sarah, and brutally
murders her in front of the large french doors.
When the
man realizes that Maddie cannot hear him, he sneaks into her house
and steals her cell phone. She later gets several picture messages
from her own phone that show her in various parts of her own home.
After finally seeing the man outside, Maddie writes a message on the
door that she won't tell anyone what she saw and that she has a
boyfriend who will be there soon. In response, the man lifts his mask
to reveal his face, tells her that she can now identify him, and
claims that he can get inside anytime he wants. Hush then becomes a
cat and mouse game between an unknown assailant with a crossbow and a
woman just trying to survive the night.
Hush is
one of the few movies I've seen recently that actually made me gasp
and occasionally scream at my television. It was so dark and twisted
that you can't help having some type of response. At one point, the
man drags Sarah to the window and uses her beaten and bloody hand to
knock on the window. When Maddie sees him, he then uses the dead
woman's hand to actually wave to her.
What kind of sick fuck does that kind of thing?
The
best thing about this movie is that it doesn't do the classic thing
of making her deafness become a disability. While she is deaf, it
doesn't focus too much on her point of view in terms of making the
scenes completely silent, but it does do a great job of actually
making us feel for her and wanting her to survive, whether or not she
can hear. When not watching horror flicks, I tend to make some girly
choices like the television show Switched at Birth. It was amazing to
see a film that actually shows ASL and features a strong character
who is more than just another deaf girl.
Hush
was so interesting that my boyfriend came in halfway through it, sat
down to smoke a cigarette, and got so caught up in it that he forget
he was supposed to take a shower. It's an incredibly powerful
thriller that actually made me put down my phone to focus on seeing
what happened next. Everything about this film was just amazing, from
the actors to the music to the pacing. It's true proof that you don't
need a lot of different sets or even a ton of cash to make a movie
that resonates with viewers. This is the best horror film I've seen
in a long time and well worth the five stars I gave it.
Hush
is currently streaming on Netflix.
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