Review of Hush (2016) by Jason W — 24 Apr 2016

In today's film industry, especially with horror films, each new horror film feels the need to set a trend, or try something so unbelievably new that it just feels like someone wanting to create the next Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers.

However, Hush takes a simple story, a woman in her home, being hunted by a deranged killer, and throws in a delightfully simple, yet brilliant twist. She is deaf. This creates a world of opportunities for the director, which he utilizes in the most masterful of ways.

Although the beginning seems very similar to a stereotypical indie film, once you're put into the action, everything becomes interesting. The cinematography is lovely, the sound design, despite her being deaf, is wonderful, sending the viewer in and out of her perspective with the changing of sound, occasionally silencing the audio and at the same time instilling fear in the viewer by giving them a view of the killer preparing to make his next move.

All of the characters, despite there being a small amount, are pretty well done, with our two main characters, Mattie (The Victim) and The Man (Our unnamed killer) shining in their great performances.

Mattie doesn't have dialogue, but her physical performance makes up for her lack of dialogue, and The Man being a smart, yet devious killer with his weapon of choice being a crossbow. Overall, the writing of this film was so incredibly solid, with the characters surpassing the cliche of horror movie characters being stupid, and this is made evident when both main characters take every precaution and be careful in deliberate in their actions.

Is this a franchise? No, not really, but that's probably the best part about this in my opinion, because this was one of the best horror films to be released recently, and it worked so well in every aspect of horror.