Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

"Hush" is an example of that sub-genre of the thriller which I have come to think of as the "……. from Hell" film, a sub-genre which was given a new lease of life in the late 1980s and 1990s by the success of "Fatal Attraction" (or "One-Night Stand from Hell"). This was followed by "Pacific Heights" ("Tenant from Hell"), "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle" ("Nanny from Hell"), "Single White Female" ("Flatmate from Hell") and "Bad Influence", which can be summarised as "Bloke-You-Meet- In-A-Bar from Hell". And "Hush" gives us the Mother-in-Law from hell. The heroes and heroines of films like these were often Young Urban Professionals, or "yuppies" as they would have been called at the time, and Helen, the heroine of this movie, is a New York yuppie who seems to have everything going for her. She has a good job and a handsome boyfriend named Jackson, a fellow-yuppie from an aristocratic old-money Kentucky background. When Helen discovers that she is pregnant she and Jackson decide to get married and to return to his ancestral family home, Kilronan, to help his widowed mother run her stud farm. So far, so good. But in films like this it never stays good for long. Jackson's mother, Martha, turns out to be obsessively possessive towards her son, as though she were suffering from an Oedipus complex in reverse, and takes a violent dislike to Helen. Before long Helen realises that she is in danger from the deranged older woman. Although there have been a few examples ("Pacific Heights", "Bad Influence", Domestic Disturbance") with a male antagonist, for some reason most of the more memorable "from Hell" movies ("Fatal Attraction", "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle", "Single White Female") have a female villain. The main characters- Glenn Close's Alex, Rebecca de Mornay's Peyton and Jennifer Jason Leigh's Hedy- all commit evil deeds and yet they all remain recognisably human. These films manage to elicit a certain amount of understanding, even at times sympathy, for these woman, because their behaviour is fuelled by very human emotions. Alex is motivated by sexual jealousy, Peyton by grief and desire for revenge and Hedy is haunted by mental health issues caused by her traumatic childhood. "Hush" never attempts to humanise Martha in this way. Jessica Lange was at one time a fine actress who won two Oscars for "Tootsie" and "Blue Sky", but her performance here is in nothing like the same class as those given by Close, de Mornay and Leigh in the three films mentioned above. Martha is simply presented as mad, bad and dangerous to know with no attempt made to explain why she should behave in such a monstrous way towards her own son's wife, and neither the director nor the screenwriters nor Lange herself seem interested in depicting her in anything other than a one-dimensional manner. Lange received a "Worst Actress" Golden Raspberry Award nomination, and had this not been the year of the dreadful "Spice World"she might have become the first actress to do the Oscar/Razzie double several years before Halle Berry achieved it. (In the event "Worst Actress" went jointly to the five Spice Girls). None of the other cast members, including the film's other "big name" Gwyneth Paltrow, however, are much better, with the sole exception of Nina Foch as Alice, the elderly mother of Martha's long-deceased husband. As Martha's relationship with her mother-in-law is just as toxic as the one she has with her daughter-in-law, Alice and Helen are natural allies. The film doesn't, in fact, have much going for it beyond some attractive photography of the Kentucky countryside, especially in winter. The dialogue is banal and the acting is below par. This type of plot has become over-familiar in recent years and "Hush" is a particularly uninteresting example. 4/10

Jackson Baring (Johnathon Schaech) brings his girlfriend Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) home to meet his mother Martha (Jessica Lange). They're a couple of New Yorkers and Martha is alone in the big family estate. She wants his son to be home and she has a devious plan. Soon after the visit, Helen finds herself pregnant. Jackson proposes to her and they have a wedding back at the family estate. After a masked intruder terrorizes Helen, they decide to leave NYC and go back to the horse farm to help his mother fix it up.This starts off too slowly. It's a lot of fake interaction that telegraphs where the movie is inevitably going. It is both predictable and boring. It improves slightly after the very long setup and the couple starts living with the mother. Jessica Lange deteriorates into a caricature. The husband is a ridiculous fool. The last 15 minutes is badly written. It's begging to end with a bang, but the movie ends with a whimper. It's really silly to end it in that way. It's simply a weak effort from writer/director Jonathan Darby.

In the beginning of Hush, I was ready to be thrilled because I was told that this movie was going to be a horror film. But, then, that was just only the beginning of a misunderstanding. The reason why? Well, the opening credits of Hush does set up a very creepy and haunting introduction. But, the movie fails, I'm afraid. In the movie, Jackson (Jonathon Schaech) is living with his girlfriend, Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) in New York City. Jackson's mother, Martha (Jessica Lange), is living in Kentucky, alone with herself. The young couple are seen in the beginning of the movie, visiting Martha on his farmhouse. The name of Martha's farmhouse is Kilronan and this particular farmhouse is where Jackson grew up. After returning from Kentucky, Helen reveals to her husband that she is pregnant. Soon enough, the young couple are married at Kilronan. Another character that is introduced is Alice (Nina Foch). She tells Helen that she can't trust Jackson's mother. We don't why she can't trust her. Meanwhile, Helen is attacked by a home invader who steals her locket. Before the home invader leaves, he cuts her with his knife and Helen is rushed to the hospital. Martha tells her son that she is selling the ranch because she can't run it alone. The movie then falls even deeper into the main characters' secrets. One of them involves Jackson's father death. As a child, Jackson witness his father fall down a flight of stairs and injured himself severely. But, there's more to that. Alice tells Helen that Jackson's father died because he tripped on a nail puller and fell down the stairs. I had a lot of negative criticisms for Hush, and there are lot of things that this movie fails to do right. One of my criticisms is that the story isn't bolted down to the movie itself. It seems that this story wanders around the screen without having the intelligence or the thought to stay put. There are some unnecessary scenes that are in this movie, such as the scene where Paltrow is attacked inside her New York apartment. Yet, even as the movie goes on, she never mentioned anything about the home invader cutting her stomach although, it's never explained. Another problem that I had in the movie is a particular scene where Jessica Lange holds Paltrow captive inside her home while she is going into labor. I really felt that the screenwriters and the director really push Lange's actions to the extreme during that whole scene, which I think, is being played for cruelty. In fact, Lange's character is unworthy. I didn't buy her character mainly because of two reasons: 1. Her country accent, which really slows the movie down at times. 2. Her plans to destroy her son's relationship with his girlfriend are predictable. I felt that I've seen this movie, and I bet I have. As of a matter of fact, this plot was also presentable in films like Consenting Adults and Single White Female. In those two films, the idea of someone ruining someone's else relationship. Here, it doesn't work. Hush is a predictable movie and is not really at all thrilling or terrifying. Jessica Lange doesn't do a good job in her role as the deranged mother. Jonathon Schaech is not convincing as Paltrow's husband. He doesn't seem to realize what he's getting himself into and even in the end of the movie, he is sort of playing dumb on us. Gwyneth Paltrow is all right in the beginning of the movie, but in the end, she basically rushes the film right up to the end credits. As for Nina Foch, I wish there were more scenes of her. She is the only character I would follow. But, she couldn't save this movie. What we got here is three completely different characters stuck inside a confusing and somewhat slow and lame story. Hush is basically a lame psychological thriller. It couldn't have been better. ★★ 2 stars.

In theory, "Hush" sounds like an ideal movie, but I'm afraid the results leave a lot to be desired. How in the world did these actors, especially Gwyneth Paltrow, get duped into participating in this project? Everyone is phoning in their performances here. This is a movie you might as well be listening to on the radio. The "story", not that there is much of one, is this: A New York couple, Jackson and Helen, are visiting his mother, Martha, for the holidays. She smokes, drinks, and tries to tear this couple apart (from what I can recall, anyway). The closest any of these characters get to being menacing, is when Helen (Jessica Lange's character) changes the temperature in the hot tub her mother is bathing in at the spa (or wherever the tub is). I didn't buy the story, I wasn't engaged, and I didn't care about the characters (or what would eventually happen to them). The things that happen, happen simply because the screenplay requires it to.** out of ****