Hush: Militantly Minimalistic Horror

If I were gifted a stalled car for every time I watched a horror movie with a deaf character, I'd have three stalled cars. That isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened three times.

When life hits me with a limitation in one area, I've found that I tend to excel in another. Maddie Young could relate. When life took away her ability to both speak and hear, she turned to writing. She's pretty darn good at it, too. Her latest horror novel, Midnight Mass, has received widespread critical acclaim, though she's run into writer's block trying to create another. Having found inspiring success followed by frustrating obstacles, she's moved away from the city to a small house in the woods to clear her mind enough to finish her next novel - and this is when a sinister masked crossbow-wielding stranger makes his bloody entrance into her life. Maddie soon finds that the real world may be better at conjuring up horrors than her mind is.

Hush is a minimalistic movie, the type so bare-bones that I found myself wanting a little bit more. Nevertheless, there are a lot of good things to say about it. One of the best is its sound design. Whenever the movie takes on Maddie's perspective, all of the diegetic noise - the noise of the world - fades. A very similar technique was frequently used in the more readily recognizable A Quiet Place, though Hush came first with a 2016 release. Hearing or no, Hush is more or less about Maddie's attempts to outsmart her assailant, and I like how much of a problem-solver she is. While I don't subscribe to the idea that a dumb horror movie is a bad one, there is something keenly satisfying about being surprised by the solutions a smart character like Maddie can come up with. I genuinely found myself rooting for her to win, and I think you will too.

On the downside, one of my frustrations with the movie is that the killer seems more intent on slowly toying with Maddie than he is in actually killing her, and while this is by design, it annoyed me just like I know it will annoy others. Hush is a short movie, clocking in at a mere 81 minutes. And yet, the mind games its killer plays really make it drag at times, and the movie can't escape a creeping sense of repetition. Also, I can't lie when I say that it's more than a little frustrating to watch a killer who's just this horrendously bad at killing. Maddie's smart, no doubt about it. I just found myself wishing she and her attacker were on more equal footing intellectually. Nevertheless, Hush works as a compelling exercise in watching the mouse attempt to outsmart the cat, because even if this cat isn't the brightest in the kennel, he still has all the advantages over the mouse.

Hush is a short movie, narratively stripped down to the bone. And despite some of its more frustrating tendencies, director Mike Flanagan brings an undeniable cinematic intelligence to the table that in some ways makes up for the killer conveniently having an IQ of maybe 45, because while I understand that logic isn't as relevant to the merits of a movie as some think, Hush tested even me at times. Luckily, Maddie is a character who is extremely easy to root for. Played wonderfully by Kate Siegel, you'll find yourself wanting her to survive, which isn't something I can say about many horror movie characters. Lastly and importantly, the suspense of this movie is palpable. Every small noise Maddie makes sounds like a cacophony, because even if she can't tell she's making noise, we can - and he can too.

Shhhhh.

Hush - 7/10

John 10:22-30