Pas un bruit

I thought Hush was one of the best Horror movies I've seen in years. It reminded me of Wait Until Dark but with a deaf victim instead of a blind one. I really cared about the main character and all the actors did a fine job. I've been off work this week and have been catching up on all the movies on Netflix. Most of the time I don't expect much, especially from the direct to video movies. Every once in a while you come across a gem. This movie was very well photographed also. There are no scenes so dark that you can't figure out what is going on. I hate that in so many horror movies. I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes horror movies without anything unbelievable in them like ghosts or monsters.

This is gonna be a long one, so hang tight. Right off the bat this movie sucks. It's so awful. It's literally the concept of The Strangers with a deaf person plastered onto it to make it seem unique, and best part yet? They went out of their way to avoid actually hiring a deaf actress/adviser or research anything about what it's like to be in the deaf community (outside of sign language or "vibrations"). I can write a freaking novel on all the issues that I have with this film, but I'll keep it short. And, let me point out, I've never gone out of my way to write a bad review for anything. 1) It lacks plot and depth, and the depth that is provided the writers couldn't even stick to. The whole "unique" idea to this girl is that she is deaf, yet capable of living on her own. It's pointed out in the beginning of the film that she can respond to vibrations, yet upon being right next to her friend screaming and banging on a door she doesn't react to those vibrations. HOWEVER, she does respond to vibrations created from tapping on a window. And, don't even get me started on the countless scenes wasted talking about her ex Craig, as if he was going to play a pivotal role in this film at all. 2) The countless upon countless times this broad could have been murdered. The killer's intent was to toy with her....yet all he did was one thing. The rest of it was him pacing for 80 minutes and then getting hurt. If this was in any way realistic she would have died at least twenty times, especially given the numerous idiotic ways she tried to escaped or especially the end. If she had AT LEAST died in the end I probably wouldn't even care. Oh, yeah you're already on the verge of bleeding out to death (the director clearly chose to point this out by her vision blurring and her appearing drowsy) but you got enough energy to stab a dude ONCE and then hobble off and then fight him again and then get choked out....but still survive? What, we gonna chop this up to adrenaline? Nah, and I'm only naming one real scene that had blatant evidence that this movie sucks, you'll encounter a lot more before you even get remotely close to this part. All in all, it's gratuitous to say that this movie is anything more than a waste of time.

**Spoilers** I can't imagine why anyone would think this movie was any good. It's ridiculous with a story full of plot holes, in fact it has so many that you'll be left wondering where do you even begin. The protagonist, Maddie, is deaf and mute and lives in the middle of nowhere. It's very unrealistic given anyone in that situation would know how dangerous it would be to be on their own in that kind of environment. Despite this she doesn't lock her doors, giving the killer a chance to sneak in and steal her phone. She also doesn't keep a gun, again highly unrealistic and absurd when you consider people buy guns in America like they're buying toys. She doesn't keep a back up phone and her house is full of glass doors and windows making it ridiculously easy for anyone to break in. The killer seems to be some sort of superhuman, his hand is impaled with a hammer, he gets shot with a crossbow bolt but none of that seems to have any effect on him. When John, Maddie's neighbour, shows up to her house searching for his girlfriend and see's the writing on the glass door he proceeds to act normally despite the fact his girlfriend is missing and there's something very suspicious about the writing on the door. When the psychopath confronts John pretending to be a cop, he easily believes him even when it's obvious that the guy pretending to be the cop looked very sketchy. Then there's the scene towards the end where Maddie locks herself in a room ready to stab the killer and he sneaks in behind her through the window, again the scenes absolutely moronic. She has her back towards him and then like a scene straight out of a B grade Matrix movie she turns and stabs him just before he could stab her. This movie is utterly stupid, save yourself the trouble and watch something better.

No spoilers, because this movie may appeal to mouth-breathers who identify with the similarly-afflicted villain in this mess. (I can't call him the antagonist, with a clear conscience). Briefly, this is a story of an evident imbecile who decides to murder an apparent moron. Since the unfortunate leading actors play similarly unintentionally slow-witted roles, there is absolutely no incentive for the viewer to become invested in the outcome. Some reviewers hoped that the damsel in distress would just get snuffed out already and gotten over with - but I can't pretend to be that concerned for the success of either party. But that's not all. It gets worse. The majority of the activity is filmed in the dark. Not just "Hollywood dark", as in a filter placed over the camera lens to indicate that it's dark, but actual darkness. So, congratulations to anyone with the ability to absorb photons more efficiently than the ordinary humans among us. Since many psycho-thrillers are completely dependent on the protagonists making stupid decisions, it may be some sort of a mixed blessing that this one makes no departure from that trusty, rusty, old plot device - and stupid decisions pop up with tedious regularity. Accordingly, the vague movements that are dimly noticeable on the dark screen eventually become unimportant enough for us to give up caring about whatever the heck is supposed to be happening. I watched this dreck virtually for free on Netflix. In my experience, one has to watch a lot of terrible movies in order to appreciate the better ones, so the time lost on this poorly-written and badly-directed pap is just another lesson. Also, I could easily afford the risk of paying less than one hundred percent of my attention to the frequent, boring interludes, to read up about the movie so that I could put the visible fragments together. Without IMDB and Wikipedia to literally spell it out for me, I would still be in the dark. 'Hush' gets two stars because I watched the entire thing. Single stars are reserved for the unwatchable, thus causing the artificially higher rating that I attribute to this one. A stupid story and and a poorly made flick.