Hush (2016) on Netflix
Deaf author Maddie Young lives alone in the woods, unable to start her next book. A masked killer pursues her wounded neighbor Sarah to the house, then targets Maddie.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb6.6/10171,968 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes93%
Trailer
Plot summary
Maddie Young, a deaf horror novelist, lost her hearing and speech after bacterial meningitis at thirteen. Her novel Midnight Mass wins acclaim and she moves from New York City to a remote house in the woods, living only with her cat, Bitch, and struggling to write another book. Her neighbor Sarah brings back a copy of the novel and says she wants to learn sign language; the visit touches on how little company Maddie keeps. After dark, a masked killer carrying a crossbow chases a wounded Sarah to the house, and her cries for help go unheard. The killer works out that Maddie cannot hear and decides she will be his next victim. He takes her phone during a video call with her sister Max, sends her photos of herself, cuts the power and punctures her car tires.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hush (2016)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Mike Flanagan made Hush's protagonist a deaf mute because he wanted to direct a film without dialogue. He briefly considered making Hush entirely silent but abandoned it, believing building tension with that limitation would be impossible and audiences would seek audio elsewhere.
- Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel developed the largely scene-direction script by acting it out in their own house. When they shot in Alabama, they could not find a similar house and had to significantly alter the script.
- For the single-location film, Mike Flanagan used a Steadicam, boom mic and spotter to follow Kate Siegel's every move and make the movement dynamic. The resulting audio was unusable and redone in post; Flanagan said it initially sounded like a herd of elephants.
- To represent Maddie's world, Hush used ambient sounds including ultrasound machines rather than pure silence, which Mike Flanagan felt would make viewers more aware of their surroundings. Kate Siegel also had to ADR her own breath into the final film.
