THE AISLE SEAT - "HUSH"
by Mike McGranaghan
For some reason, carousels are always a sign of dementia in movies. And, in fact, the new movie Hush opens with Martha Baring (Jessica Lange) staring at a toy carousel. It will come as no surprise, then, that Martha is not the kind, genteel southern woman she initially appears to be. Playing a psychopath is one of the most difficult things to do; the temptation to over-play a deranged character is tough to avoid. Lange tries to keep Martha grounded in some kind of reality, but Hush sometimes makes it impossible for her to do so. There are some moments of intensity in this thriller, and yet the film plays more as a melodrama than as the psychological case study it wants to be.
The story is set primarily at a Virginia horse farm called Kilronan. Martha lives there, and one Christmas her son Jackson (Johnathon Schaech) arrives with his girlfriend Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) for a visit. The first meeting between Martha and Helen is awkward (the strict Catholic woman finds Helen naked in her son's bed). Things get worse; Martha is kind of a creepy lady, always saying things that are inappropriate or easily misconstrued. When the visit is over, Jackson and Helen go happily back to New York.
Several months and a marriage later, they are drawn back. Kilronan is in need of repair and Martha can't run the place by herself anymore. Jackson and Helen agree to return for a year to help get the place running again (he goes out of family duty, she goes because of increasing fears about the city's violence). Helen is also pregnant, so a quiet horse farm seems like a good place to begin a family. But Martha is acting strangely. At first, it almost seems like she wants Helen to miscarry. Then it seems she has other purposes - namely to get Helen out of the way once and for all. And as for the unborn baby...well, let's just say that she has a plan there, too.
Hush appears to have had a rough time getting to the screen. The release date was pushed back several times. The title underwent numerous changes (first Kilronan, then Bloodline). There are scenes in the trailer that are nowhere to be found in the completed film (always a sign of heavy cutting and re-cutting). And most of all, there is the dual nature of the story. At times, I felt that I had seen this plot before (and I had). This is another entry in the "...from hell" series. You know the kind of movie I mean: take any character description and put the words "from hell" behind it and there's your premise. Single White Female - which this movie sometimes reminded me of - was about the roommate from hell. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was about the nanny from hell. Hush is about the mother-in-law from hell. Get the idea?
And to a certain extent, Hush follows the formula very predictably. Martha seems to get more and more bizarre as the story progresses. Helen fears for her life, but no one else seems to realize that Martha is evil. Near the end, a major "surprise" is revealed (if this particular plot twist catches anyone off guard, that will be the real surprise).
But I have to admit that, although the story is cliché, I found parts of Hush to be very disturbing. Jessica Lange fights against the psychological implausibility of her character to play a woman who is genuinely disturbed. I don't want to ruin specific plot details, but the things she does to Paltrow in the movie's second half are seriously unnerving. Martha's plan (which admittedly doesn't make much sense) is a foul one, indeed - and I found myself horrified at the thought.
That part of the film works very well, but the motivations of Martha are never clear enough to make her insanity truly believable. Her ultimate goal (and the reason for it) is too hazy. The acting from Lange, Paltrow and Scheach is good - up until the next-to-last scene in which everyone begins overacting terribly. That's the moment when Hush really falls apart. The scene should be a powerful catharsis of deceit and deception, but because Martha's psychological reasoning is too sketchy, the scene turns almost laughable. There was a lot of promise in the performances and the individual scenes here; with a little more plausibility, Hush could have been a thriller worthy of Hitchcock rather than just another potboiler.
(
1/2 out of four)
Return
to the Film Page
