HUSH (2016)

Studio:       Netflix
Director:    Mike Flanagan
Writer:       Mike Flanagan, Kate Siegel
Producer:  Trevor Macy, Jason Blum
Stars:     Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr., Michael Trucco, Samantha Sloyan, Emma Graves

Review Score:

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Summary:

A deaf mute fights for survival when a masked man terrorizes her inside an isolated woodland home.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Deaf mute author Maddie Young lives alone in a remote woodland house. While waiting for her boyfriend John Stanley to return home, nearby neighbor Sarah Green comes over to keep Maddie company. Sarah leaves and is later killed by a masked man armed with a crossbow and a knife on Maddie’s porch. Maddie is unable to hear Sarah’s screams.

The man realizes Maddie is deaf and sneaks into her house. Maddie FaceTimes with her sister Max and they discuss Maddie’s ex-boyfriend Craig. Max thinks she sees someone behind Maddie. Maddie realizes she is being stalked from inside the house when the man sends pictures to Maddie’s laptop using her phone.

The man cuts power to the house and slashes the tires on Maddie’s car. Maddie uses lipstick to write a message telling the man that she will not tell anyone about him since she hasn’t seen his face. The man deliberately removes his mask and reveals his plan to torment Maddie before killing her.

Maddie barricades herself in a room. The man taunts her using Sarah’s dead body. Maddie sets off a car alarm to distract the man while she attempts to recover Sarah’s cellphone from her corpse. Maddie is unsuccessful, but manages to injure the man by putting a claw hammer in his arm when he reaches for her through a window.

Maddie makes it outside and hides under the porch. She runs while the man fires his crossbow at her. Maddie eventually makes it back inside as the man continues stalking her.

Maddie sneaks out a second story window. Before she can climb all the way down, the man fires an arrow into her thigh. Although injured, Maddie manages to take the man’s crossbow when he tries climbing up the ladder to attack her again. Maddie kicks the man onto the ground below and goes back inside.

John comes over looking for Sarah. The man impersonates a police officer to catch John off guard. John eventually realizes the man is lying, but the man slits John’s throat before John can hit him with a rock.

Maddie runs outside. The man catches her and bashes in her head with a rock. It turns out Maddie imagined the fatal encounter while running through scenarios of what to do next. Maddie concludes that killing the man is the only way to escape.

Maddie fires a crossbow arrow into the man as he prepares to kill Maddie’s cat outside. The man chases Maddie back to the house and breaks her arm when it becomes caught in the sliding door while going back inside. Maddie writes a taunting message to the man daring him to come after her.

Maddie arms herself with a knife and hides in the bathroom. The man successfully sneaks in, but gives away his presence by breathing on Maddie’s neck. Maddie slashes at him before he can stab her.

The physical confrontation continues throughout the house. The man ends up on top of Maddie, but she stabs him in the throat with a corkscrew and kills him before he can choke her out.

Maddie calls 911. She exits her house and smiles as sirens are heard approaching.

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Click here for Culture Crypt's SXSW 2016 interview with director Mike Flanagan, star Kate Siegel, and producers Jason Blum and Trevor Macy.

Review:

Being deaf and mute doesn’t prevent Maddie Young from enjoying some celebrity as a novelist, though her social life certainly hasn’t seen as much success.  Still reeling from a rocky relationship, Maddie has settled for the solitude of an isolated house surrounded by trees, where the only disturbance comes from a motherly inner voice lashing Maddie to pound out more pages on the computer.

Tonight, writer’s block worries and ex-boyfriend woes are the least of her troubles.  Because a crossbow-wielding masked man has made Maddie his target for a one-on-one game of predator versus prey, for no better reason than because he can.

With no voice to scream, and no one nearby to hear her if she did, Maddie is on her own against the madman.  Maintaining her wits and summoning strength to match the murderer’s requires all the courage and cunning she can manage.  With a mind like hers, Maddie’s mental arsenal might be exactly the weaponry required to turn the tables on this deadly killer.

Alongside Fede Alvarez’s “Don’t Breathe,” Mike Flanagan’s “Hush” was one of two home invasion horror movies to premiere at SXSW 2016.  Both are similarly backed by largely wordless scripts forcing audiences to feast on sight and sound-driven suspense while following a silent faceoff between intruders and the intruded.  Where they differ is in the former’s focus on breakneck-paced brutality against the latter’s intent to have calmer characterizations contextualizing carnage.

“Don’t Breathe” (review here) fashions itself from a domino-falling frenzy that is highly attractive to havoc-hungry appetites.  “Hush” devotes more of its time to inflating balloons instead of repeatedly popping them.  This accordion approach to creating tension doesn’t give “Hush” the same relentless energy that sees “Don’t Breathe” in a start-to-finish full sprint.  Yet that difference in tempo separates “Hush” as a movie aiming for subtle psychological appeal as much as it does for visceral.

Those familiar with “Absentia” (review here) and “Oculus” (review here) understand that director Mike Flanagan prefers suspense that smolders.  Adrenaline punctuates beats instead of allowing action to overpower story.  This “slow burn” style can lead impatient viewers to be frustrated by sleepier scenes, even though everything Flanagan puts onscreen is deliberate for the tone to succeed, including the lulls.

“Hush” is a Stephen King-style story about looking out your window and suddenly seeing someone staring back at you.  A concept of fear-dominant anxiety coupled with Maddie’s deafness inherently makes it so that empty jolts are not the sole source of fright.  Since sudden boos have little effect on Maddie, the emphasis on blocking and audio design challenges “Hush” to keep thrills elevated above traditional tropes.

Leading the way is Kate Siegel as Maddie, with the entire film virtually doubling as a demo reel for what Siegel brings by her presence.  Since Maddie is mute, Siegel is tasked to play her part entirely through facial expressions and body language.  Working in tandem with Flanagan’s direction, what impresses most about Siegel’s performance is how it is finely tuned to avoid devolving into overacted pantomime.  The role requires physicality to create the character, but Siegel completes Maddie as a relatable person through restrained emotion and nuance.

As her nightmarish nemesis, John Gallagher Jr. plays the masked man as a Ted Bundy type, boozy from homicidal psychosis with an open mouth and sunken eyes.  Protagonist and antagonist are so evenly matched in commitment to toppling one another that their conflict isn’t so much cat-and-mouse as it is cat-and-cat.  It doesn’t take long for Maddie to prove herself as a capable heroine, though that fact does not detract from the ongoing dread or constant threat to her life.

With a runtime just under 80 minutes, “Hush” isn’t big on bells and whistles complexities in its plotting or production.  It doesn’t need to be.  Once you move past a deaf mute living alone in the woods being a suspiciously convenient conceit for a “helpless against an attacker” scenario, the movie unleashes intensity both loud and quiet with exhilarating efficiency as a smart, stripped-down thriller.

Review Score:  75

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