Review: “Hush”
- Scott
- Oct 14, 2016
- 2 min read
I’ve seen my fair share of movies that have had good to great ratings, and I can’t see why. It’s refreshing to see a well made horror/thriller movie hit the list that’s well put together.
At the early age of thirteen, Maddie Young had a terrible case of meningitis. Due to complications with this virus and the ensuing treatment, she lost her hearing, and has since been unable to speak. That doesn’t keep her from living her life. She lives alone, isolated in the woods. She keeps in contact with her family, and her friend and neighbor Sarah. She also writes, a lot. She does not let her inability to hear or speak keep her from anything. One night after she tries and fails to make dinner for herself, a stranger in a mask shows up at her house and threatens to kill her. The masked stranger figures out that she is deaf, and attempts to take full advantage of this. What he wasn’t ready for, was how well Maddie could take care of herself. Let’s just get this out there, I loved this movie. It was originally written to be a completely silent film but along the way the writer director decided that in order to build tension and convey what they wanted, it needed to have some speaking lines in it. Netflix bought the rights and made it an exclusive release through their service. Hush would have been an excruciating movie to see in the theater. The run time is about 80mins and all total there are five cast members (six if you include the cat) and maybe fifty or less lines of actual dialog. It’s mostly silent throughout, and that only adds to the sense of dread and (as described above) tension. When your cast can literally all fit into a single car, you’d better be on your game to make the rest of the movie shine, and Hush certainly does. It’s a little crazy that watching this movie heightens your own sense of hearing. Creaks in the floor, the rustle of leaves, the sound of an arrow slowly sliding out of someone… ugh. I’m sure that is the intention of the style in which Hush is directed and produced, and it works amazingly well. I’ve recommended movies before in these marathons, but none quite like this. It’s unique. Everything about it is well done, and it deserves to be seen by more people. While not technically a “horror movie”, it does fall squarely into the genre of thriller, and that’s close enough for me.
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