Hush is written and directed by Mark Tonderai and stars William Ash, Christine Bottomley, Claire Keelan and Stuart McQuarrie. Music is by Theo Green and cinematography by Philipp Blaubach.
Warring young couple Zakes (Ash) and Beth (Bottomley) are driving up a dark and rain-soaked M1, when all of a sudden a grime covered truck swerves in front of them and the tail-gate lifts briefly to reveal a caged woman in the back. It signals the start of a fight for survival for the pair of them......
The setting is suitably bleak, anyone who has had cause to be on a rainy British motorway at night knows how mind-numbing it can be. Even the stops at the service stations serve as mundane experiences, where the staff are on auto-pilot and other patrons are zombie like in the banality of their routines. Into the fray are a young couple who are on the cusp of breaking up (though Zakes in that macho way is ignorant to this fact), this is where Hush manages to rise above merely being a horror picture cobbled together from bits of other genre pictures. It examines how a fractured relationship reacts to a terrifying reality thrust into their lives, and with barely half a dozen principal characters in the story, this clearly isn't going to be a psycho truck driver movie that sees the antagonist offing a number of dim-wits with gory care-free abandon.
Director Tonderai has done an impressive job with such limited resources, there's a realistic tense atmosphere brought out by the low budget. His staging of certain scenes really grab the attention, with a container base set cat and mouse sequence of events truly breath holding stuff. He doesn't compromise the pace of the movie with pointless filler, it's a standard three tiered horror structure (meet the principals/put them in peril/do or die finale), but the film always remains honest to its core ideas, with Zakes reacting to his various predicaments in a way that is not beyond the realms of reality. There's also some nice camera touches (under carriage tracking shot) and smart use of appliances (light sensors), so why is Hush not more loved and lauded?
Fact is, is that hardened horror fans from the last twenty years will not be able to get away from that old familiar feeling of deja vu. From the cat and mouse on asphalt core story, to scenes such as a toilet hide out, there's territory that has been well trodden in better movies. There's a couple of twists, one that genuinely surprises, but one which is so telegraphed it annoys greatly. Then there is the use of the hand-held camera, which has become a staple requirement, it seems, of fledgling horror directors. Here it is used to dizzying great lengths, so much so it grows tiresome entering the last third and had this particular viewer wondering if the contents of his stomach was about to unload! There's also, perhaps inevitably, some implausibilities that are likely to test the patience of some.
Undeniably it has flaws and struggles to shake them off at times, but the good far outweighs the bad here. And given the small budget and fresh ideas the writer/director puts into what is becoming a stagnated formula, Hush is actually something of a small triumph and well worth seeking out if you are stuck for a tension pumped thriller. 7/10
