Hush Review

Suspense is a difficult genre to master, you have to be able to grab your viewer from the beginning and keep them on the edge of their seat, but also continually push a narrative so it doesn’t become boring or stagnant. Hush meets this criteria in some aspects, but in others it definitely falls short.

Hush (2016) was directed by Mike Flanagan, written by Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel, and starring Kate Siegel. Maddie (Siegel) is a young deaf mute woman who escaped to a cabin in the mountains to pursue her writing. While there she becomes the victim of a masked psychopath stalker who plays games and torments her throughout the night. She must use her remaining senses to stay sharp and find an escape without succumbing to her fear.

I liked the choice of keeping the main cast limited to two characters, however I felt that if that’s the route the writers wanted to go, they should have expanded upon the backgrounds of the characters and what drives them. The killer wasn’t even named at any point, let alone what his possible motive might have been to stalk his prey.

There were definitely moments that felt stagnant in the movie, I found myself waiting for the next thing to happen. In my opinion, this is a pitfall that a lot of modern slasher and suspense movies fall into, dragging scenes out for little payoff in the end.

Overall, even though I am grateful that the slasher and suspense genres are very much still alive and popular, they may have derailed from what I have become accustomed to. I would recommend this movie to anyone who is a fan of this genre in its modern state.

• Hush had a budget of 1 million dollars.
• This movie was released on April 8, 2016. It was produced by Intrepid Pictures and distributed by Netflix.
• This movie was filmed in Alabama.
• Hush was filmed in 18 days.
• Because the main character is deaf and mute, the film contains less than 15 minutes of dialogue, meaning that more than 70 minutes occur without a single word spoken.
• Director Mike Flanagan and co-writer/star Kate Siegel are a married couple, and created the storyline for Hush while on a dinner date in 2014. They wed in February, 2016.
• The main character Maddie and her sister Max are named after Siegel's real life niece and nephew.