Disclaimer: I loathe films like these that peddle purpose-free nastiness.
Maddie is a deaf-mute, single woman who is soon to finish her first novel. If only she can decide upon the appropriate ending. She lives alone in a secluded forest area, with her nearest neighbours within shouting distance; not that it helps her either way…
When a lone cold blooded murderer chances upon Maddie’s home (“hey, I was just killing nearby and I noticed you are vulnerable and live alone”) he immediately decides to double down to make her his next victim.
Both predictability and stupidity ensue.
For a start Maddie lives in a home with Windows everywhere and no blinds. Like a cat outside the fish tank. The killer can see in. She can see out. But as long as they each stay on their respective sides, no harm will come.
Hush is eighty minutes of the naughty kitty pawing away at the innocent fishy, who seems hell bent on occasionally leaping out of the tank.
With Maddie being deaf-mute and her communications (laughably easily) disabled, it’s up to the kitty to provide the dialogue. This doesn’t help, as this kitty would make anyone a dog lover. Boringly ominous and stupidly repetitive, he is also the most blasé and least spatially aware killer on film, wandering about menacingly and ridiculously overconfident despite not having any certainty that an isolated woman with special needs might have other means of calling for help. (She doesn’t, which is another headscratcher.)
As I opened I detest films which exist for base violence with no purpose behind it. Hush has direct parallels in that regard with The Strangers, only it isn’t nearly as efficient and (depressingly) meritorious in its efforts to taunt, degrade and ultimately violate. I also docked it for one of the laziest and most egregious ‘dream scares’ in recent history.
Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. It’s one thing to be mean and nasty, but I expect more of an effort from the filmmakers than the ‘I was passing by – killer’ exhibits.
