Hush (2016 film)

Hush
Official poster
Directed by	Mike Flanagan
Produced by	Trevor Macy Jason Blum
Written by	Mike Flanagan Kate Siegel
Starring	John Gallagher Jr. Michael Trucco Kate Siegel
Music by	The Newton Brothers
Cinematography	James Kniest
Edited by	Mike Flanagan
Production company	Blumhouse Productions Intrepid Pictures
Distributed by	Netflix
Release date	March 12, 2016 (2016-03-12) (SXSW) April 8, 2016 (2016-04-08) (United States)
Running time	81 minutes
Country	United States[1]
Language	English American Sign Language
Budget	$1 million[2]

Hush is a 2016 American slasher film directed and edited by Mike Flanagan, starring Kate Siegel, who also co-wrote the film with Flanagan.^[3] The film co-stars John Gallagher Jr., Michael Trucco, Samantha Sloyan, and Emilia "Emma" Graves. It was jointly produced by Trevor Macy through Intrepid Pictures and Jason Blum through Blumhouse Productions.

The film had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 12, 2016,^[4] and was released by Netflix on April 8, 2016.^[5]

Plot

Madison "Maddie" Young is a deaf author, who temporarily lost her ability to hear and speak after a bout of bacterial meningitis at the age of 13 and lost both permanently after a corrective surgery gone wrong. She lives in a house, isolated in the woods. Her friend and neighbor Sarah visits her one day to return a copy of her book. That night, a masked killer chases her to Maddie's house. Sarah bangs on the door for help, but Maddie cannot hear her, and the man stabs her to death.

The man quickly learns Maddie is deaf and sneaks into the house, steals her phone, takes photos of her and sends them to her. Realizing this, she locks herself inside the house. The man cuts the power and sabotages her car. Maddie writes on the glass-paneled front door "won't tell, didn't see face, boyfriend coming home" with her lipstick. However, the man responds by taking off his mask. Maddie unsuccessfully tries to distract him with her car alarm to get Sarah's phone from her body, but she manages to stab his arm with a hammer's claw. He mocks Maddie, revealing he has the phone as well.

She makes several failed attempts to escape through the window and ends up climbing onto the roof. The man fires a crossbow bolt and hits her leg, but she manages to knock him off the roof and grab his crossbow. She staggers back into the house, removing the bolt from her leg before trying to reload the crossbow. John, Sarah's boyfriend, arrives and looks for Sarah. The man meets John, pretending to be a police officer responding to a call, and delivers a false story of how he was rendered unconscious by an intruder. He asks for John's phone, faking a call for police backup. John points out the flaws in the story, stating that Maddie is deaf and mute and therefore unable to make a call. John, suspicious, distracts the man and attempts to attack him. The man stabs him in the neck.

As John bleeds out, he uses his remaining strength to put the man in a chokehold, mouthing "run" to Maddie. Maddie knows that she will not be able to do so and is dangerously close to bleeding out, so she decides to kill the man. The man threatens Maddie's cat with a knife, but she fires a bolt from the porch, hitting him in the shoulder. While running back inside, she drops the remaining bolt. While attempting to grab it, the man slams the sliding door shut on her wrist, then he crushes her hand with his boot. Maddie manages to lock the door. He threatens to enter the house, to which Maddie writes "do it, coward" on the door with her own blood. While the man begins bashing the glass with a tire iron, Maddie quickly types a description of the man and a message to her family on her laptop before running to the bathroom with a knife, waiting for the man to enter.

Having difficulty breaking the glass, he crashes through the skylight into the bathroom, unbeknownst to Maddie. The man's breathing inadvertantly alerts Maddie, who narrowly avoids his attack and stabs him in the knee. She stumbles into the kitchen, her vision beginning to blur. When approached in the kitchen, she sprays the man's eyes with insecticide and disorients him with her visual smoke alarm. However, the man overpowers her, throwing her down and strangling her. On the verge of death, she grabs a corkscrew within arm's reach and plunges it into his throat, finally killing him.

Maddie retrieves her cellphone from the man and dials 911 before stumbling outside and sitting on the porch. Maddie's cat sits next to her, rubbing against her leg. As the police near her house, Maddie closes her eyes, pets her cat, and smiles.

Cast

• Kate Siegel as Maddie Young
• John Gallagher Jr. as The Man
• Michael Trucco as John Stanley
• Samantha Sloyan as Sarah Greene
• Emilia Graves as Max

Production

Nothing was known about the project until September 2015, when it was revealed at a buyers' screening which occurred at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.^[6] It was revealed Mike Flanagan had directed and written the film, along with his wife Kate Siegel who also stars in it.^[7]

On making the main character a deaf mute, Flanagan had said it originated from him wanting to do a movie "without dialogue".^[8] The possibility of making the film entirely silent was briefly considered, but was soon abandoned when it was realized that building tension with this limitation would be "impossible" ^[8] Flanagan also noted that the target audience would not have been used to silent films and, as such, would "seek out every kind of audio stimulus anywhere else in the environment" or simply choose to not watch the film at all.^[8]

The script itself consisted largely of scene directions, which Flanagan and Siegel developed by acting out in their own house.^[9] The fact that so much of the script was based around Flanagan and Siegel's own house proved problematic for filming, as when they went to shoot the film in Alabama, they could not find a house similar enough to theirs and had to significantly alter the film's script.^[10] Flanagan also found challenges in the single location and had to plan the cinematography to keep the film interesting to the audience, especially given the mute nature of the protagonist; to this end, Flanagan used a Steadicam to follow Siegel's every move, along with a boom mic and a spotter, to make the movement more "dynamic".^[10] The resulting audio for these scenes could not be used and had to be redone in post, with Flanagan noting that the audio initially "sounded like a herd of elephants."^[10]

To represent Maddie's world, various ambient sounds were used, such as the sound of ultrasound machines. Flanagan did not want to use pure silence for these scenes, as he still felt it would make viewers even more aware of their surrounding and take them out of the experience.^[10] As a result of the aforementioned camera set in, Siegel had to ADR her own breath into the final film.^[10] The film's soundtrack was composed by The Newton Brothers.^[11]

Release

The film had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 12, 2016.^[4][12] Prior to the premiere, Netflix acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film, which it released on April 8.^[13][14]

Reception

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes Hush has an approval rating of 94% based on 16 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10.^[15] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 67 out of 100 based on reviews from 7 critics indicating "Generally favorable reviews".^[16]

Benjamin Lee of The Guardian said that Hush "offers ingenious suspense" and awarded it four out of five stars.^[17] Geoff Burkshire of Variety, though criticizing the film's third act, called it "one of the more inspired concoctions to emerge from the busy Blumhouse horror-thriller assembly line in recent years."^[18] Michael Gingold of Fangoria gave the film 3.5/4 stars, calling it "a good old-fashioned truly scary movie".^[19] Jasef Wisener of TVOvermind gave the film a 4.7/5, noting that "Thanks to the performances from its two leads, Hush succeeds in almost every aspect and delivers one of the best horror films in modern history." ^[20] Richard Newby of the website Audiences Everywhere called the film "a modern slasher movie classic that's not to be missed."^[21]

Stephen King wrote about the film on April 20, 2016, saying, "How good is Hush? Up there with Halloween and, even more, Wait Until Dark. White knuckle time. On Netflix."^[22] Filmmaker William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist, also commented on the film, saying "HUSH is a great horror film...on Netflix. Terrifying." ^[23]

See also

• List of films featuring home invasions
• List of films featuring the deaf and hard of hearing

References

External links

• Hush on IMDb