“I didn’t pick isolation; isolation picked me.” In just a few years, Mike Flanagan has evolved into one of the more interesting genre directors out there with films like Absentia, Oculus, and the upcoming Before I Wake. With the home invasion thriller Hush, Flanagan embraces his indie roots with yet another exceptional character-driven horror experience that proves there are still effective ways to terrify audiences when you have a strong concept, smart script and talented cast at your disposal.
Hush centers on Maddie (Kate Siegel), a writer who specializes in crafting thriller novels and lives in isolation after bacterial meningitis claimed her voice and her hearing at an early age. Being perfectly content to shut out a world she already feels distanced from, her only real companions are her cat named Bitch and a handful of neighbors, including Sarah (Samantha Sloyan), who does her best to keep the reluctant Maddie involved in the world at large despite her protests.
One night, unbeknownst to Maddie (initially), Sarah is brutally stabbed on her property, and the killer (John Gallagher Jr.) soon realizes he has another potential victim in the unsuspecting Maddie. He quickly picks up on her hearing loss and decides that rather than just kill Maddie outright, he wants to play a few games with her first. Despite her handicaps, though, the quick-witted writer isn’t ready to take things lying down, and continually fights back against the brazen psychopath.
Hush is truly an exemplary outing from Flanagan, who co-wrote the taut and thoughtful script with Siegel. Relying on only one location and a very small cast, Flanagan does a masterful job of creating a terrifying low-budget outing that feels unlike many of its home invasion peers. It can be so hard to find innovative ways to unnerve audiences, especially since most genre fans feel like they’ve “seen it all”, but Hush finds some really clever ways to mess with its characters and audience.
Siegel is truly aces as Maddie; her handicap makes her seem like the perfect victim for a crime of this nature, but in actuality, she’s incredibly resourceful and calculating, albeit still just a normal person. Siegel keeps her character firmly rooted in the reality of her horrific situation, so as Maddie suffers various wounds and setbacks, they feel authentic to Flanagan’s story and the situation. So often in movies, you see someone take a bullet or get knifed and they just keep going without missing a beat, but Maddie suffers greatly here. The audience feels her pain, and I thought that was a nice touch from both the director and the film’s star.
I also really dug Gallagher Jr. as Hush’s antagonist; masked killers are practically a dime a dozen these days, but the way his character reveals himself and continues to toy with Maddie is just downright nasty fun from start to finish (at one point he even taunts Maddie with the corpse of her friend and I may have cackled with glee at that very moment—I’m just a terrible human being, I know).
The score for Hush was done by the talented Newton Brothers and it, along with the sound design, adds so much to the overall film. The sound design is particularly crucial, especially during the moments when Flanagan puts us squarely in Maddie’s shoes by removing all sound—a clever and immersive way to keep us engaged with the film’s hero.
An allegory for how isolation could be the downfall of humanity wrapped up in a smart and effectively scary home invasion story, Hush really impressed and left me with an even deeper appreciation for Flanagan’s approach as a visual storyteller. Siegel is one of the best “final girls” to grace the horror genre since Sharni Vinson in You’re Next, and I really appreciated the way Hush managed to consistently keep me on my toes.
Movie Score: 4.5/5
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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