Hush (2016) Review

 Hush (2016) 3.5/10

Hello everyone and welcome back to another movie review. Today, let’s take a look at one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Hush was released on March 12, 2016 with the director being Mike Flanagan. Somehow the movie received critical acclaim, even from horror icons Stephen King and William Friedkin. Personally, I hate this movie for its shotty writing and its ability to make an interesting concept like this idiotic and frustrating to watch. Let’s begin.

Our story follows deaf-mute protagonist Maddie who has retreated into the woods of a small town to live in solitude. She is a writer who has published one book and is stuck trying to finish her second, but can’t figure out the ending. As she’s writing, her neighbor comes running to Maddie’s house seeking help as a masked killer is chasing her. He murders her and notices that Maddie can’t hear. He then sets his sights on killing Maddie, but first he wants to play around with her with psychological warfare. After making his presence known, Maddie then has to figure out a way to survive this force of nature.

I kinda like the plot for this movie. Kinda reminds me of Bird Box except without being able to see, the main character can’t hear. I will say though that after watching the movie, I felt unsatisfied with what I watched. I like the concept of the whole movie, but I feel like it could’ve been executed better. The main problem with the movie is the killer aka The Man as the movie calls him. He’s just this random dude that showed up and started killing people. No motive was given, no backstory, or any character development. He’s just an obstacle that Maddie has to get over. You can argue that his ambiguity gives him a tense-filled edge over other horror villains, but this guy wasn’t even that interesting. There was nothing there that developed him other than being some random guy that’s killing people for no reason.

Anyway, there’s this scene in the movie that I want to talk about. About 70% through the movie, we get to have an actual dialogue scene. Maddie’s neighbor’s boyfriend shows up looking for his girlfriend thinking that she was at the house. He stumbles across the killer and the killer starts to act like a cop. They start talking and this would’ve been an excellent spot for some exposition on the killer (like his name and why he’s doing this). But no, we never get any of that. One thing leads to another and now the boyfriend is dead too. This was the most disappointing scene in the whole movie and was ultimately a massive waste of time.

There’s another scene I want to talk about and it’s the very last scene of the movie. Okay so at the very end of the movie, Maddie now has a hole in her thigh from being shot with a crossbow. Her hand is completely crushed because the killer was stomping on it. She’s lost a lot of blood and she is very weak and barely able to move at this point. After baiting the killer to come get her, she then goes and hides in the bathroom. Thinking he’s going to bust through the patio door seeing that’s where he was trying to break into, she assumes he’s going for a straight shot to kill her. She arms herself with a knife and readies for his entrance. You can see the bathroom window behind her breaking and see the killer jump behind her. He starts talking to himself, saying “If I hit you at the right spot, I bet I can make you scream.” After taking a deep breath, Maddie can feel his breath brush up on her neck. She then moves like a trained assassin as he’s about to stab her, turns around at the perfect moment, misses the knife, and stabs him in the knee. He drops the knife and she makes a “run” for the kitchen. She collapses in the kitchen as the killer follows. He’s about to stab her when she sprays him with bug spray. His eyes are completely fucked now. They struggle around and now he’s on top of her, choking her. This little moment lasts for a good while and you can hear her heartbeat slowing down. As she’s dying, she starts having memories of her family. In a final act of strength, she reaches for the wine bottle opener and stabs him in the neck, essentially killing him. She “recovers” some of her strength, she grabs her phone from the killer and dials 911. She then gets up, walks over to the patio and sits on the ledge with her cat. You can see the police lights coming from the distance. As they reach her house, the movie ends with a smile of relief on her face. I HATE this ending. I really do. Right when she baited the killer to get her, she wrote on her laptop the killer’s distinctive features so that he’ll be caught if she dies and he escapes. As this is all going on, she is losing blood and energy. You can even see her vision fading into nothingness. But at the worst fucking moments, she keeps getting back up. It’s medically impossible for her to do that. She has a hole in her leg that’s been bleeding out for at least a half an hour and you’re telling me she can continue doing what she did. That’s bullshit. At the very least, she should’ve died right along with the killer. As she stabbed his neck, he was still strangling her! Her pulse was no more! Her eyes were shut! SHE SHOULD HAVE DIED! But the plot was like “we can’t have our female, hearing impaired protagonist die to the white male.” This ending reeks of PC bullshit and it ruined the already average movie.

Okay so how’s the rest of the movie? It’s ok. Music was ok. Nothing noteworthy. Cinematography was bland, although there’s this one shot that was really awkward and it didn’t fit in with the rest of the movie. There’s this scene where Maddie was able to take the killer’s crossbow. She retreats to the bathroom to tend to her wound. After that, she tries to load up the crossbow, but she’s not strong enough to pull the drawstring. She keeps trying and trying but she just can’t do it. After the killer kills the neighbor’s boyfriend, she has the crossbow with her and she loads it up to take aim at the killer. This load up right here was very weird. She’s standing up next to the door and when she reaches down to pull the drawstring, the camera follows her movement and turns. This was very unexpected and left a bad taste in my mouth. The rest of the movie didn’t have shots like that, so why do it here?

Acting is ok at best. I will say though that I enjoyed the dynamic between Maddie and the killer. These were the best parts of the movie. John Gallagher Jr (the killer) was great as well as Kate Siegal who played Maddie, although I do think John could have done a bit better in terms of performance (you can clearly see he needed some improvements when he was talking to the boyfriend. Speaking of, Michael Trucco (the neighbor’s boyfriend) did an excellent job for his very brief scene.

There’s probably more I can talk about with this movie, but I’ll leave it at this. I can’t really recommend this movie at all. Sure it’s entertaining, but that ending sucked. The more I think about that ending, the more I hate this movie. Everything leading up to the end is average at best, but that ending just ruined it. Just stay away from this piece of shit and go watch something else.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.