Sunday, October 18, 2020

Hush (2016)

IMDb plot summary: A deaf and mute writer who retreated into the woods to live a solitary life must fight for her life in silence when a masked killer appears at her window.
Directed by Mike Flanagan. Starring Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr., Michael Trucco, and Samantha Sloyan.

I am on a ROLL with my October horror movies, because this is another extremely solid one. It draws obvious comparisons to Wait Until Dark, another movie about a woman with a disability being stalked in her home. This one is even more narrowly focused, as it all happens over the course of a single evening, with only one notable time jump. It does a stellar job of placing us inside our protagonist as she explores every option she has, from trying to reason with her stalker to finding her murdered friend's phone to distracting him with a flare and then running... and as her options narrow, we feel her claustrophobia and panic. And it's so easy to get sucked into that along with her -- at one moment when she had a small victory I audibly yelped in excitement. For the most part, she makes smart choices the audience can ride along with (though I'll never understand why she didn't throw something heavy at his head while she was on the roof!). And those early scenes when he discovers she is deaf and toys with her while she has no idea he's there is one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen on screen. Definitely worth a watch!

How it entered my Flickchart:
Hush > Poulenc: Dialogues des Carmelites
Hush > Dust
Hush > Death at a Funeral
Hush < Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Hush < Ernest & Celestine
Hush < (500) Days of Summer
Hush > Fences
Hush < Footloose (1984)
Hush < Romancing the Stone
Hush > The Kid (2000)
Hush < The Parent Trap (1998)
Final spot: #375 out of 3240, or 88%.

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