How appropriate to end my Shocktober with yet another overrated entry from Netflix. Again, there are admirable qualities to Mike Flanagan’s Hush, released exclusively to Netflix last March, but its still just your run of the mill slasher. Don’t let the low body count fool you, this is another by the numbers stab-a-thon.
Maddie Young (Kate Siegel) is an author living alone in the deep woods. She lives a relatively happy life with one inconvenience… she’s deaf. Which means she isn’t going to hear the strange man in an expressionless mask creeping around her home. She can’t even hear her own screams!
It’s not a bad setup and they do have fun with it in the beginning. Maddie doesn’t hear her neighbors being horribly murdererd, nor is she ever aware a killer is creeping up on her, but she has advantages too. Maddie can set ear-shattering alarms to distract and abuse the killer and has the potential to outsmart him. The film without a doubt has inspired moments.
The problem with Hush is it reaches a certain point where it feels like many other forgettable slasher films before it. There’s only so much you can do with the premise, eventually, it will just boil down to a primal struggle between the two. The slasher genre is becoming harder and harder to reignite. If it was ever that good to begin with.
The idea for Hush barely has the legs for a feature, even an 81-minute feature. I’m not sure what so many others are seeing that I’m not… or hearing? See what I did there? Anyways, it’s still good fo a laugh. Check it out if you want and have a Happy Halloween!