Hush- Slasher Style Horror Film Leaves Much to be Desired

★★☆☆☆

Mike Flanagan's 2016 movie tries very hard to be different from 

other horror films and misses the mark entirely

By Cameron Froehlich, Colonie 

May 14, 2025

Hush, a Blumhouse and Intrepid Pictures production written by Kate Siegel and Mike Flanagan contains your typical horror movie starter pack: a masked killer, pretty female protagonist, ominous setting, and a series of questionable decisions that has viewers groaning over the character's seeming lack of common sense. 

What the film lacks in originality,  it does somewhat make up for with its use of audio and visual effects. Written and Directed by Flanagan, there are some nice aspects to this rather underwhelming feature, but not enough to make it worth watching. 

The film takes place in a secluded cabin in the woods, following a deaf and mute horror writer, Maddie Young (Kate Siegel). Maddie lives alone in her cabin with only her cat, and her neighbors, Sarah,  (Samantha Sloyan) and John (Michael Trucco) for company. 

After an evening dinner with Sarah, Maddie calmly cleans the kitchen as an unnamed killer (John Gallagher Jr.) murders Sarah right outside the door, unbeknownst to Maddie. When the killer realizes that Maddie is deaf, he begins to taunt her, sneaking in through the unlocked door and taking her phone, he sends her a picture of herself on the couch from outside the house, revealing himself. Maddie must then use her wit to survive the encounter with this sadistic killer.

At the beginning of the movie, I had hope. This did not last. The beginning of the movie provided important context without being too slow, jumping right into the meat of the story as well as quickly introducing the interesting use of audio that would carry throughout the film, and cinematic shots. 

Flanagan's choice to completely silence the movie at times to give viewers a glimpse into Maddie's perception of her experiences as a deaf woman was brilliant, and added depth and even a bit of a creep factor to the film. Additionally the shots of Sarah’s death, while gory, were very well done. The camera panned from Sarah's perspective to Maddie's, creating a chilling display of helplessness on the part of Sarah. And when the camera shifts out to show Maddie through her own window, Siegel does an excellent job of displaying creeping and rapidly increasing levels of fear, peaking when she first sees our killer. 

The blank smile on the mask combined with the cold eyes of the man underneath it makes for a villain who will send a chill up the spine of viewers, however this effect is quickly ruined when the killer removes his mask within minutes, marking the point where the movie as a whole begins to go downhill. 

While the choice for the killer to remove his mask makes sense within the story, I disagree with Flanagans choice to keep the mask off, as the face of the killer is not nearly as frightening without it. While Gallagher did a decent job of portraying a cold killer, he wasn't menacing enough without the mask to keep a lot of the fear factor alive. 

On top of that, after Maddie's initial encounter with her assailant, the middle of the movie feels a bit like watching paint dry, but with more cheap and pointless violence. It's the same thing over and over for nearly an hour.

This film also suffers from horror movie logic. Both Maddie and our killer suffer several different moderate to severe injuries. I found myself wondering several times throughout the film how the two were moving so easily, or even still alive given the amount of pain they would be in and the amount of blood loss.

Adrenaline can only take a person so far, and while it may have been enough to keep Maddie going with her mangled hand, it seems a bit unrealistic that the arrow wound she suffered to her thigh did not slow her down more, and that she was able to run and climb despite it. 

While the concept of having a deaf protagonist was an original idea for this 2016 film, this was pretty much the only original idea within the movie. Nearly everything else was the same recycled material that can be found in just about every horror movie under the sun. 

One redeeming quality of Hush for me was Flanagan's use of audio. He occasionally cuts all sound within the film to give viewers a glimpse into Maddie's perception of events, and the additional obstacle standing between her and survival. 

Notably, there is a nice full circle moment at the end of the film. During Maddie's conversation with Sarah she reveals that she has an internal voice despite her inability to talk, and that she will run through different endings to her novels in her head. At the end of the movie, Flanagan uses a shot that contains two Maddies: one of her in that moment, and her inner voice, talking through different ways she can make it through the night. 

There are flashes of potential outcomes throughout this scene, which was visually interesting and gives viewers a look inside Maddie's head, into her thought process which I thought was a nice choice to tie things back to the beginning of the movie. 

Unfortunately, Flanagan's clever use of audio-visual effects was not enough to salvage the poorly written story that was Hush. This movie tried so hard to be an engaging original work, and I truly did believe that it had a chance, but it just didn't hit the mark. 

Hush is available to watch on most major streaming platforms.