Hush (2016)

Just perfect...

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Please DO NOT read this review until after you've watched the movie!!! Ok, Maddie makes it clear a couple of times that she has 7 different endings to the book she is writing but can't decide which she wants to use. At a critical point in the film she manages to get to her laptop and write a goodbye note to her Mom and using the phrase "I died fighting". Later on there is a scene where the killer is on on top of her and choking her on the floor. Everything goes silent EXCEPT for the sound of her pounding heartbeat getting slower and slower until...there is no sound at all and she closes her eyes. This is the point at which she DIES in the film. Everything after that is just a fantasy of her overtaking and killing the killer. Now, when she is sitting on her front porch and you can see the approaching police cars, notice her eyes are closed with a slight smile on her face...THAT was Maddie's ending. Loved the movie!

I hope you haven't watched this movie yet. I was like you once "hey this looks pretty good, ive been looking for another good thriller to watch on Netflix, and woah the IMDb ratings not bad either, why not?"... I'll tell you why not. I saw this movie a week ago, and for a week this movie has haunted my dreams. How are there so many good reviews for this film? I feel like I'm loosing my grip on reality. It just makes no sense. Pretty early on in the movie I found myself rooting for the antagonist (who had absolutely no back story nor motivation whatsoever) simply because if you are not even going to arm yourself or get some semblance of a plan together then apparently you didn't care to be alive that much in the first place. Early on she had the knife hammer combo going on and it worked for her, then she ditches weaponry all together. some how she manages to get the crossbow from this friggin murderous boy scout and wastes her time trying to load it for like 20 minutes where she just stops caring about keeping an eye on the guy. All this could have been overlooked because I was pretty baked, but why in God's name would you not finish the dude off when he was being held in the dying chokehold of maybe the most gullible man in the world? He used his last dying breaths to try and strangle this man, has him completely immobilized and she just sits inside watching like a helpless dumb dumb. I mean stab that dude, help out just a little. I'm not mad I'm just disappointed get it together guys.

I hesitated before watching this one because I don't like horror movies that are too scary, and that mask made me feel sick. Well, luckily the mask didn't stick around for long which I found a bit strange because it did make the man 100% scarier.This movie would have been so ordinary and basic if the main character had not been deaf. That added a new level of horror because she never knew where the man was unless she saw him. I found my heart beating so fast at times because somehow I could feel her panic through the screen. Maybe that was due to the fact that the actors were great or maybe the director just did a good job. Then to the flaws. At times the movie was very predictable and Maddie made some very strange decisions that annoyed the heck out of me. It's a horror movie so obviously it has to take place at night, which made every scene very dark. My screen was at full brightness and I still had trouble seeing what was going on. I also found it very weird that the viewer never gets to find out who 'The man' is and most importantly, why would he want to kill Maddie? I could maybe watch this one again. Not too scary but enough to leave you biting your nails at times. Probably too dull for someone who loves terrifying horror films. The actors were great and fit their roles perfectly. Not too much of those boring filler scenes. The best part of the movie was however the fact that the cat did not die, I could hug the writers for that.

Hush might not be the best movie ever, but it has that Mike Flanagan pace and tone, which made me like it before I even knew who Mike Flanagan was. I said that Hush might not be the best movie ever, but it certainly isn't the worst. It was concise, paced very well and well-acted by both Kate Siegel and John Gallagher Jr. I've seen people say that The Man's motives were unclear, that things didn't make sense. To me, that is what pushes this movie a little higher in the originality department. It's fascinating that we don't know The Man's motives, but we see his brutality and madness in full bloom. Yes, he was sloppy and he and Maddie could have killed each other a few times before the end, but that worked for me BECAUSE he was totally unhinged. This is worth a watch if you like suspenseful movies that contain some violence. The real thing to watch is Mike Flanagan.