Review #196: Hush (2016)

This review was originally written in 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #51: Hush (2016)

I was kind of dreading watching this movie, to be perfectly honest. I've seen it before, a few years ago. I was dreading it because while I remembered it being very good, I remembered it being TERRIFYING.

And it 100% was terrifying on this re-watch.

Hush is a movie by Mike Flannigan, who's made several other fantastic horror films (including Oculus, one of my top ten horror films of all time). It's about a woman named Maddie who gets stalked and attacked by a masked serial killer, with the encounter made all the more difficult by the fact that Maddie is deaf and mute. As such, this film is almost entirely without dialogue- there's apparently only fifteen minutes of it in the entire film- and several scenes are without any soundtrack or ambient noise as well, imparting the experience of Maddie's lack of hearing onto the viewer.

(I will say, I think it's interesting that so far I've watched several other movies where primary characters are differently-abled: notably, Don't Breathe has a blind victim-that-turns-into-a-villain, and A Quiet Place has a deaf protagonist and monsters that kill anyone that speaks. I really think that incorporating such a strong example of a hindered sense or ability to communicate is surely difficult to do, but when it's done well, it brings the film up to another level.)

So, I should probably mention: home invasion is a huge fear of mine. I've never had a house broken into (that I know of....) but when I have nightmares, it's very often about someone chasing me into my home and I'm trying to lock the doors behind me before they can get inside. So these types of stories chill me to the bone on a very personal level, hence why I was dreading revisiting this film. The tension during every single scene of this movie was so high, every time one of the characters would be right on the cusp of getting the upper hand on the villain but unable to succeed I would feel my entire body on edge as if I was the one there in person, and every injury I would momentarily feel the pain myself. I don't expect everyone to have the same experience as me but this film was absolutely a visceral, dreadful, nerve-wracking eighty minutes (in the best way possible).

For anyone who hasn't seen this film and just wants a little taste of why the killer in this movie is so terrifying, lemme give you a little recap of a moment from the first encounter:

The killer shows up at Maddie's house, while she's cooking. He was following Maddie's neighbor, who he has stabbed and is running for help. The neighbor bangs on the door frantically, but Maddie can't hear. She's deaf! So she goes about her business, completely unaware that her friend is being stabbed just a meter or two away. When she finally does notice, and she sees the masked killer, she freaks out, obviously. But after the killer stalks around outside the house for a little while, Maddie tries to bargain for her life, by writing a message on the glass door, saying basically, "I haven't seen your face, I can't identify you, please just leave and you'll get away with all of this".

And the killer, in response, walks up to the glass door, takes his mask off, and shows her his face. He's not leaving.

Man! Such a terrifying film. It's not perfect- there was a really cheap fake-out that happens about twenty minutes before the end, and while the last portion has some interesting mind-palace-type-stuff that Maddie uses to work out how she's going to get through this ordeal, I really wish it had been used more throughout the film; as it was, it felt like it came kind of out of nowhere (though it was used a tiny bit while she was writing at the beginning). But because of the mind-palace-stuff and the fake-out they did, there was a moment right before the climax that I literally thought was a dream or something because it seemed so bizarre that I assumed it had to be another fake-out or whatever. (And it wasn't.) So it was a little unclear, during a very important moment in the story, that I wish had been set up just a tiny bit better.

But all in all, this is an amazing film and probably the scariest one I've watched all year.

Overall Rating: 9/10 Broken Crossbow Bolts

Movie/TV Connection: In the beginning of the film, Maddie's neighbor comes by to return the book Maddie wrote and lent to her. The book was titled Midnight Mass, and we see the blurb on the back detailing the plot. Apparently, Mike Flanagan went on to make that story, Midnight Mass, into a Netflix series!