HUSH – Review

Review by Stephen Tronicek

One can just imagine Mike Flanagan holding a checklist that has horror movie genres to master on it with the “Psychological/supernatural” and “slasher” checked off. Two years ago Flanagan brought us one of the the scariest horror films of recent years, OCULUS. Now, Flanagan has brought us HUSH , one of the most lean, but endearing slasher movies of late.

The reasons are truly not difficult to figure out either. Flanagan attacks the first 20 minutes in the best way possible using very obvious and over the top emotions to set up how broken the protagonist that we start out with is. Kate Sigel (who’s also one of the writers) plays Maddie, a deaf writer, who is longing for so much, yet can’t seem to catch the break she needs. Sigel’s smart enough to play Maddie with very on the nose emotions near the beginning of the film. That’s absolutely perfect for a slasher movie because the emotions that come with a guy stabbing a bunch of people are generally over the top as well. Plus, it gets everything in the way of exposition dealt with in an intelligent if unsubtle way.

After this simple, but effective beginning HUSH goes crazy. The introduction of the silent killer is played off incredibly. Flanagan shoots this introduction in a way that almost creates an air of comedy which simply makes the film more fun to watch. It never slips back into that realm, as the rest of the film turns into a more grounded and slowly brutal horror experience, but both are at least interesting tones for a slasher film. As the film continues the central conceit of Maddie’s deafness continues to help keep the film as lean as it can be while also presenting well thought out reasons for character choices that might have been questionable in other slasher films. Flanagan presents the violence realistically, and the shock of the down the earth violence keeps things wonderfully tense. The Killer actually takes off his mask pretty early in the movie, and while you won’t hear who it is from here there’s a palpable surprise that such a dramatic actor would be cast here as the villain. The actor is impressive though, and the film suggests through its on the nose emotions that the Killer is almost a perfect foil to Maddie. Everything that needs to be set up is, and it all falls into perfect place.

It’s almost as simple as that. HUSH is a sparse, but tense piece of work. Anymore elaboration confounds the purpose of the film. It’s not perfect as a lot of action is placed in the dialogue, and there’s not really a middle act, but it comes in like OCULUS did a few years ago to remind us that Flanagan, and horror movies can only get better.

HUSH is currently streaming on Netflix