Fairaher
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Plustown
A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
Darin
One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
Spikeopath
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
smorris405
I read other reviews of this film and decided too give a "2" rather than "1". Simply because the arguments made are valid and I like to keep an open mind.Generally, I love British thrillers. A poor budget or mediocre acting aside, the British usually do things better than the Americans (just my humble American opinion). However, this film takes all the bad things from American thrillers and gives them a British nuance. The film is as if C. Thomas Howell and Rutger Hauer, in "THE HITCHER" had a baby with LeeLee Sobieski and Paul Walker in "Joy Ride". The result is less than entertaining.So my dear horror and thriller fans, give yourself a break. Pass on this one. It will only disappoint.
Leofwine_draca
An arguing couple are driving along a British motorway in the middle of the night when the back door of a lorry driving in front of them momentarily opens – revealing a young woman, naked and trapped in a cage inside. Soon enough the couple find themselves thrown into the middle of a nightmare as they follow the lorry and try to find out what's going on.So far so good – this premise is serviceable if familiar, another in the sub-genre of 'road thrillers' following in the footsteps of Spielberg's DUEL, ROAD KILL and BREAKDOWN. The low budget and regional nature of the production promised to give this a decidedly British spin on proceedings, so I sat down ready to enjoy the movie. Unfortunately, as the story progresses, it falls apart completely, with plot hole after plot hole and silly coincidence after silly coincidence, until the film loses all grasp of reality and ends up as nothing more than a Hollywood-style B-movie.HUSH has more ridiculous moments than most and these drag the plot down, leaving the viewer with too many unanswered questions. It feels like there were problems with production and bad editing is used to try and cover up these flaws – but it doesn't work. Neither does the casting of the wooden William Ash as the unsympathetic hero. Ash, a familiar face for British TV viewers thanks to his role in WATERLOO ROAD, has a single expression throughout the movie and is the second worst thing about the film – next to the script. I profess a certain enjoyment in watching him tortured in silly SAW-style scene, though.In any case, the film runs out of steam long before the climax and I ended up wishing for it to end. Not one to remember.
John Seal
The British social phenomenon known as "white van man" - usually a middle-aged Caucasian with a clean-shaven head and a white van he uses to deliver goods and services around the country - gets the cinematic treatment in this decent thriller from writer-director Mark Tonderai. William Ash and Christine Bottomley play Zakes and Beth, a young couple who, whilst driving along Britain's main arterial road, the M1, espy a woman apparently being held against her will in the back of a truck. After stopping at a rest station to gather their thoughts, Beth is, in turn, snatched by the mysterious trucker. Will Zakes put on his man-pants and rescue her? Filmed on location in Yorkshire, this British blend of Duel and The Vanishing (with a tiny bit of Blow-Up for good measure) is a pretty decent effort, especially considering it's Tonderai's first feature film.
