"Hush" (2016)

At a certain point in this movie, I’d turn to my friend and said that at that moment I was happy I wasn’t watching this movie in a movie theater of Black folk. Because they would not stand for the shenanigans in this movie. Actually, I take it back, I wish I did so it would at least be entertaining to listen to everyone around me tear it up the way I am about to. Incidentally though, this should’ve been the movie my friends and I should’ve made had we not been partying through life at 30 and been drunks. To their credit, it’s an accomplishment with zero budget and a few known actors. They will have a future.

The movie is about a deaf writer who is in isolation because of…sadness or breakup or something. She is played by Kate Siegel…NOT Katey Sagal. Looks like Angelina Jolie’s younger sister but Sucks for you younger lady. She’s deaf but has friends online that remind her to…um…be deaf. Such as signing every thing…even though she reads lips, but they do it wrong, so there’s a misunderstanding. In case you didn’t know she was deaf. Well, here’s where the “dumb” part comes in. She becomes completely cutoff from the world when a home invader decides to play cat and mouse with her.  Here’s the lesson to be learned here….unless you’re Sigourney Weaver in “Death and The Maiden”, you’re not THAT interesting. It doesn’t even pretend to be. There isn’t really a backstory to…anyone. And you don’t even get the slightest clue what their motivations are. Well, one is simply trying to survive the night. The exposition is way too much at times. For instance when a neighbor comes by and misinterprets the killer as a police officer. Or…and this is odd for a deaf person, her inner voice chimes in with her options (perhaps to let the actress who happens to be the writer as well…act…for the reel). This is fine, but..dammit, you had such a good mood piece.

Also, and this I’ve learned to REALLY hate. Unnecessary cruelty. I can’t tell you how far away I am from telling stories now about torture or gore. I just can’t stomach it like I did when I was younger. It’s a total selling point, and cheap at this level (Netflix). But it’s…like teenagers putting on a music. If you don’t have the budget for the stakes to be high, it just seems cheap to me. What is more strange is that women tend to insist on gore and watching themselves die in gruesome ways over men. Men tend to want to die nobly. Blown to bits at war. Or killed by the machine they’ve built.

I hate this movie the more I think about it. The actress does her best. But it really feels like a school play. The bad guy isn’t even all that bad. He does that crazy guy thing that all actors love to do, go 0-100 in 60 seconds in psycho-sis. It seems so phony, if it isn’t someone who doesn’t have the depth.

I’ll tell you this much…when you have the killer mock a dead body AFTER finding cigarettes in the pocket with the TIRED line “These things will kill you.” Either don’t listen to the actor who insists on this line, or kill the director who suggested it. Whomever let that fly…sums up why this movie is so bland and dumb.