This week’s recommendation is a really great little suspense thriller (who am I kidding? It’s a horror) indie gem about your not-so-average home invasion. Trust me, this is exactly what you want to snuggle up on the couch to tonight.
Hush opens with a glimpse into Maddie’s (Kate Siegel) life as she tries to make a new recipe, works on her novel and chats with her neighbor. What makes this movie so very interesting is that Maddie is deaf and the movie really tries to show us life from her perspective. After her neighbor leaves and she gets back to working on her latest novel, a masked killer shows up at her door, intent on terrorizing her and then killing her. Maddie’s house is in the middle of nowhere; there is no one else around for miles. Unable to escape, Maddie is determined to do everything she can to survive the night.
The great thing about this movie is that it doesn’t portray deafness as a weakness. Of course, she can’t hear her assailant as he breaks into her house and she doesn’t know where he is at any given time, but she is incredibly smart and proves to be more than a match for this psychotic killer. He obviously underestimates her, which is true of a lot of people that are differently abled; they are constantly underestimated. People don’t think that they are capable of certain things, and it’s exactly this kind of thinking that this movie challenges, which is amazing.
Director Mike Flanagan has crafted a really well done horror movie with Hush. I’ve said it before, but there are so many movies that suffer from overly complicated plots that it’s so refreshing to see a film take a seemingly small idea (a deaf woman gets terrorized in her country home) and really explore it and expand on the idea. This movie does that.
The characters are really what make this movie great, as is the case with most movies that take place in one location and have very few characters. Kate Siegel is such a likeable and intelligent female lead, which is really hard to come by in horror films. You’ll find yourself becoming increasingly invested in her survival. On the other hand, Jon Gallagher Jr., who plays the killer (and is also in 10 Cloverfield Lane – I know! I didn’t recognize him either!) is very convincing and terrifying as the villain.
Overall, this is a great indie horror film that you really don’t want to miss. If you’re tired of helpless female leads and characters that make un-relatable (and frankly stupid) choices, then this is the movie for you. Maddie is a strong, highly intelligent deaf woman who proves that it’s a mistake to underestimate her.