Movie Reviews for Writers: Hush

Hush reminds me a lot of the Audrey Hepburn thriller Wait Until Dark from 1967. It's a super creepy pseudo-horror flick that teaches the bad guys not to assume the upper hand when trying to terrorize someone with a disability. Whereas in Hepburn's flick, she was blind, in Hush, Kate Seigel is deaf and mute. But far from helpless. 

And she's also a writer, hence her inclusion here. 

Maddie, played with great skill by Seigel, has moved from the city to the middle of nowhere (as far as we know from the context within the film, only one neighbor) to focus on her writing after city life was becoming non-conducive to her process. It's while there that she is attacked by a serial killer who has already targeted her neighbor. 

Simple plot, great plotting, and some awesome character stuff while Maddie and her attacker take their roles as cat and mouse. 

Like most movies about writers, this one begins with Maddie experiencing writer's block. Hopefully, her new setting in the woods will help her overcome it. 

The trouble with that idea that ties a writer's ability to write to a location or single process is that none of it changes the writer's inside (what my Papa used to call) gumption. There's a saying that, "wherever you go, there you are." Basically, it says that you're still the same you, regardless of where you are. The same problems you are facing and finding insurmountable will follow you. 

And that is exactly what happens to Maddie. Not even her new location can get her past her story hurdle. She has a story almost done that she loves, but she's stumped on the ending. There are just too many options. She's not just stymied by the choices, she's up against the proverbial wall and just can't move on. Her backspace key is really getting a workout as she grows more and more frustrated with any of her choices. She's facing a sort of analysis paralysis in terms of how to end her book. 

It then that we the audience enter the land of metaphor (while sadly, Maddie is stuck in her reality). We get to experience how her fight for her life echoes her plight at figuring an ending for her novel. We get to put the various pieces of the puzzle together while she struggles to survive. 

It's a fascinating dichotomy for a thriller about a writer, and it's one of the choices that makes this home invasion story so compelling and amazing.  

"I have a voice in my head," she tells her neighbor early in the movie. "My mom calls it writer brain."

We all do, don't we? We have that part of our psyche that really groks stories, that really runs a 24/7 network of our greatest hits and most annoying letdowns as writers. It's a constant stream of story bits and bobs that either tease us mercilessly or eventually get figured out and captured on paper. 

When writer brain works, it's super helpful. 

When writer brain doesn't work, it's pretty damn irritating. 

In an inspired bit of storytelling by the director, we are invited into Maddie's writer brain to see how she plays out possibilities in her head (reminds me a bit of Scare Me, reviewed her earlier, in that sense). As she looks through her glass door to see the killer smiling at her, she tells herself there are too many endings, the same thing she said earlier when discussing her book. 

She tries every option from bargaining to hiding to escape, but none of it works. At one point she even writes on the sliding glass door that she never saw the masked killer's face, so he could safely leave without her identifying him. His response is perfect for the stumped author -- he removes his mask and smiles at her as if to say, "Not an option." 

It's one of the creepiest "I want you to know that I'm going to kill you" scenes in modern cinema. 

Then we see her follow each possible ending through to its logical conclusion until she is certain she has only one real choice if she wants to survive -- and of course it's the one she likes the least, as it means hiding or getting outside help isn't an option. 

Ironically, or perfectly fitting for the movie's plot, it is precisely her experience with the attacker that gives her what she needs to really focus on the ending of her ordeal (and we assume, apply that same focus to her fiction).