My thoughts on Hush, an outstanding start to Shocktober 2017. From director Mike Flanagan who took the very silly premise of a killer mirror movie in Oculus and elevated it from laughable to decent also took the home invasion movie and brought a unique sensibility without resorting to gimmicks. In the same way, in a year with Wonder Woman dominating the summer, Hush is a similarly empowering movie for females as well as maintaining suspense.
The setup is simple, author Maddie (Kate Siegel) lives alone in the woods trying to follow up a successful book. She lost her senses of speech and hearing to a nasty bout of bacterial meningitis (the exposition is delivered briefly yet effective). When a masked psychotic killer (John Gallagher, Jr., who I recognized from genre outings 10 Cloverfield Lane and the Belko Experiment) shows up on her doorstep one night, he pushes Maddie to her complete limits over the course of one night.
Hush makes a bold decision with its killer at the end of its first act, and it turns out to be a wise one. I won’t spoil it here, but suffice it to say that Gallagher is given much more to work with than your standard masked killer. The film shies away from a lengthy expository monologue, giving the character (in the credits listed as only “The Man”) the necessary menace needed to instill fear.
In a completely silent performance, the strong showing from Siegel makes the movie work. (she also was quite good in Oculus). She makes Maddie one of the best horror protagonists seen in recent memory. Her lack of dialogue in the film (save for one internal monologue, a device I'm glad that was limited) does not stop Siegel from an impassioned performance. I also have to credit the script for acknowledging and sidestepping the tropes common in this subset of the genre.
Flanagan, as expected, plays with sound design a lot in the film, albeit not as much as you might expect. The sound in the film goes out at certain points and I almost wish that Flanagan had used this technique more and had longer sequences of complete silence. There is a sparse score that never rises to the forefront of the action. I was also reminded of one of the few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I've seen featuring long sequences of complete silence.
The film’s only misstep comes with Maddie’s neighbor John (Michael Trucco), in a sequence that almost slips completely back into the home invasion cliches although Trucco doesn't play it for comedy (no comic relief side characters here) There is also a dream scare sequence that had to have been included to pad the runtime (We were at 78 minutes when the credits rolls and I do appreciate the lack of padding). The "shocking" dream feels cheap when held up next to the rest of the film.
The film is shot competently but not necessarily creatively. Cinematographer James Kniest shoots the house and the woods surrounding it with a good sense of claustrophobia, although most likely due to the budget there is no particularly innovative camera techniques. The movie is tightly cut and I especially enjoyed the editing during the aforementioned "monologue" sequence. While incredibly suspenseful, at no point was I ever truly scared during Hush and I commend Flanagan for not falling into the "boo" scare morass that seems to plague similarly typed movies.
Hush is a terrific film, boasting some fantastic set pieces and excellent performances from Siegel and Gallagher. Additionally, it is streaming on Netflix so among the crowd of garbagey recommendations, it truly stands out. I have no doubt that it will be added to many of those “overlooked horror gem” clickbaits in the near future. It’s so good that I went and added Flanagan's next movie, Ouijia 2, to my Shocktober slate.
9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment