Review - “Hush” Score: 8/10 A couple of years ago, Mike Flanagan was attached to a “dream project” film adaptation of Stephen King’s Gerald’s Game. As a pretty big fan of both auteurs and blown away by Oculus, a film already rife with overtones of King, I was eager to see what Flanagan could do with the minimal environment and characters of one of King’s most underrated stories, but news died after that early buzz. So, apparently, did the project. While I’m still not sure where that adaptation is now, whether it’s been handed off to another director or trapped in some sort of development hell, Flanagan chose to redirect his efforts to the Netflix-exclusive home-invasion film, Hush. Watching the movie, one gets the sense that Flanagan hasn’t so much abandoned the idea of adapting Gerald’s Game as he has simply decided to step back and circle it for now, honing his chops until that project moves forward. While it and Hush are superficially pretty disparate - Hush being about a deaf writer trapped in her house in the woods fending off a masked killer, and Gerald’s Game the story of a woman who accidentally kills her husband while she is handcuffed to the bed of their cabin in the woods - there are all sorts of parallels we can start to draw between the two. Both foreground strong, resourceful women in states of unique isolation battling both a predatory male presence and their own minds. The subtext is pretty evident and echoes a major chunk of Oculus, but I’d actually compare it more closely to 10 Cloverfield Lane (reviewed here!), and would even argue it has one clear edge over that movie: while both end in spectacle, Hush isn’t burdened with the task of establishing a franchise, and so never buckles under its own script to the same degree as Lane. That movie was lauded for its Hitchcockian mystery and slow-cooking suspense - rightfully so! - and both of those things can also be found here, augmented by the time-tested intrigue of the home-invasion flick: the “What would I do?” question that makes the subgenre a perennial favorite of thriller and horror directors. There’s a quiet, simmering tension throughout that I attribute mostly to the camerawork and set design, perhaps the most elegantly understated I’ve seen in a home-invasion movie since 2008’s The Strangers. As with Oculus and Absentia, Flanagan’s shoestring-budget debut, Hush is a pseudo-haunted house film. Absentia took on addiction, Oculus wrestled child abuse, and here, the terror of Hush is its protagonist’s vulnerability, which the movie takes great pains to remind us of without ever belittling or reducing Maddie to a “scream queen.” She is, in fact, exactly the opposite. Most shots are deceptively wide, especially following the killer’s reveal, pitting her against the open spaces of her house in the woods and leaving the filmmakers plenty of room to play with depth and perception. While I would have liked to see a little more creativity in this regard, there are other, subtle touches to appreciate - a window or an open doorway in just about every frame, for example, and an abundance of shadows undercut by glaring moonlight. Nothing is ever fully hidden. It’s impossible to get comfortable, even when Maddie is armed to the teeth - she just never seems to be safe. Admittedly, Hush isn’t You’re Next. It doesn’t have much of a sense of humor and it adheres to the major rules of the home-invasion game, but breaks enough of the little ones to feel fresher than it really is. While I chalk it up as another win for Flanagan, some of the more conventional aspects of the film are going to bug certain viewers, even if the movie provides maybe the first solid justification for all or most of those conventions: Maddie’s deafness. Most home-invasion movie protagonists are only isolated by darkness and script contrivances, but Maddie’s inability to even hear the killer - or herself! - adds a bonus layer of anxiety to the viewing experience, while also providing an out for most of the issues one can usually take up with home-invasion flicks. It’s very rare for a movie like this to get me talking to the screen, but that’s what I was driven to - and it wasn’t even the usual litany of why-the-hell-would-yous, don’t-do-thats, what-are-you-doings, and I-fucking-told-yous, but more genuine expostulations: I remember a handful of nos, a few oh-Gods, several oh-shits, and one completely involuntary gasp. That’s just good writing. Having already proven himself adept at handling fractured narratives and intersecting plotlines with Absentia and Oculus, to see Mike Flanagan working the same magic with the linear, A-to-B-to-C storytelling format of Hush is immensely rewarding. It’s that sense of control that really sells Hush and will come in handy if Gerald’s Game ever gets off the ground again, and at a fleet 81 minutes, credits and all, Flanagan’s third proper feature is a tightly-coiled and surprisingly accessible spring-trap of a movie, showcasing this young director’s growing potential. Don’t miss out. -Brian L.
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