Silence golden in horror-thriller ‘Hush’ – Purge producer Blum on future of horror films
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LOS ANGELES, March 13, (RTRS): Silence is golden in “Hush” one of the more inspired concoctions to emerge from the busy Blumhouse horror-thriller assembly line in recent years. Reuniting producer Jason Blum with his “Oculus” director Mike Flanagan, this simple cat-and-mouse game gets a big boost from a novel premise — the heroine is deaf — only to lose ground with a familiar follow-through and downright pedestrian third act. It would be a challenge to sell the pic’s admirably modest virtues to multiplex auds, making Netflix (who nabbed rights prior to the SXSW fest bow) an ideal venue to connect with genre fans able to appreciate the effort despite the flaws.
Maddie (Kate Siegel) lives a quiet life in a secluded house in the woods, with only a feline friend (lovingly dubbed Bitch) and the occasional drop-in from a chummy local (Samantha Sloyan) for company. That isolation provides the perfect environment to finish her next novel and the ideal setting for a roaming homicidal maniac to attack. Enter exactly such a masked man (John Gallagher Jr), who promptly severs Maddie’s few connections with the outside world and begins to toy with her both physically and psychologically. (In the film’s eeriest scene, the unnamed tormentor snags Maddie’s cell phone and texts pictures he’s snapped without her knowledge directly to the laptop she’s using.)
Formidable
What he doesn’t count on is Maddie’s ability to fight back, a formidable inner strength the film portrays as an asset she only discovers she has when she’s put to the test. Their back-and-forth is initially gripping — the upper hand credibly shifts from one scene to the next — but eventually devolves into standard survival thriller territory.
“Oculus” remains one of the best Blumhouse films (though it was an acquisition, not a production), perfectly suited to the company’s fiscally conscious approach of keeping action limited largely to a single location. “Hush” — co-scripted by Flanagan and Siegel — feels even leaner (if not necessarily meaner) and doesn’t aspire to the same level of ambition or inventiveness, but its humble meat-and-potatoes quality is bolstered by the unique conceit of Maddie’s character. Like “Wait Until Dark” before it, “Hush” places a character with a perceived handicap at the center of a tense thriller and showcases both the heroine’s vulnerabilities and unexpected advantages.
It’s no surprise that most of the action unfolds without dialogue, and that set-up provides Flanagan an opportunity to play with sound in creative ways — dropping out audio entirely to put us into Maddie’s shoes, or delivering a sudden jolt when appropriate. Bursts of loud noise are a genre cliche, but rarely used as effectively, or purposefully, as they are here.
Strong
Tech credits are strong across the board, from Flanagan’s own concise cutting (he keeps the action moving at such a steady clip that the film’s pre-credits running time clocks in under 80 minutes) to James Kniest’s fluid camerawork, Elizabeth Boller’s cozy production design and The Newton Brothers’ alternately tense and soaring score.
Although the lead role seems tailor-made for a hearing-impaired actress (despite one needless fantasy sequence with dialogue), Siegel’s likeable perf keeps the audience on her side and highlights Maddie’s knack for thinking on her feet. Gallagher is even better as the mysteriously motivated antagonist — a twisted psychopath who appears to enjoy mind games with the same fetishistic pleasure he derives from physical violence.
From “Paranormal Activity” to “The Purge” producer Jason Blum has been the driving force behind many of the defining horror films of the last decade.
His influence isn’t just creative. He’s also revolutionized the way these films are made, creating a compensation structure that encourages top talent to take a percentage of the profits in return for working for less money up front. That’s kept budgets low and resulted in a spectacularly successful run of cost-efficient smashes.
Blum is out in force at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW), where he has three films screening — “Hush” a home invasion thriller that got snapped by Netflix; “In a Valley of Violence”, a western with Ethan Hawke and John Travolta; and “Alive and Kicking”, a swing dance documentary — that show his gaze is wider than just shock and scares.
Before taking off for the Austin-based festival, Blum spoke with Variety about what the future holds for horror films, movie marketing and his company, Blumhouse Productions.
Question: How is SXSW different from other festivals?It’s a little more consumer-facing. The audience in Austin is a little broader, so it’s a fun way to gauge how a movie will play. Because of the music and the technology that’s there, there’s a wider array of folks. Sundance is such an acquisition-frenzied, industry-centric experience, and at SXSW many of the movies have distribution. And the focus is more on positioning the movie as opposed to selling them. People are more relaxed. They’ve just come out of the slopes of Utah with their shoulders above their ears.
Answer: What can you tell us about the films you have at this year’s festival?
Q: They all have our stamp on them, but they’re all super different. The thing these three movies illustrate that we do and that I’m most proud of about our little company is that we work with people over and over again. This is our fourth movie with Ethan, it’s our third movie with Mike Flanagan.
A: Why is that important to you? They wouldn’t work with us multiple times if they didn’t have a good experience. With our model, they’re not working for money up front. The most important part of the overall strategy is that people take bets on themselves and if it works out, they’re well compensated for it.
You are rewarded in success and so we need to have a transparent process. This shows that we keep our word. The most effective tool I have to work with artists I admire is to point to other artists that I admire, and show that I’ve worked with them many, many times. It’s not because I have option deals, it’s because they want to keep working with us.
Q: What kinds of horror films are working right now?
A: It’s not really about what’s working and what’s not. Horror goes from being more supernatural and it swings back to being more bloody. There’s a bit of a pendulum, and now we’re seeing things get a little less supernatural. Great stories and acting always win the day. If the story behind the scares is dramatic and the filmmaking is great, it works. If those things aren’t great and the scares are secondary, it doesn’t. “Hush,” for instance has this terrific conceit where the woman is deaf and she can’t hear her stalker. It’s terrifying and unique, and those are the things that always rise to the top.
Q: The movie business is dominated by tentpole films right now. Is it difficult for your movies, which are made for a fraction of the cost of major studio releases, to break through? It’s harder and it’s easier.
A: It’s harder to have a successful wide release for scary movies, for our movies, when you’re competing with “Star Wars” and “Spider-Man.” It’s easier in the sense that companies like Netflix and HBO are around and that helps make our movies more accessible. Take something like “Creep” which we were here with two years ago.
More people saw “Creep” because of the way it was marketed and distributed than would have six or seven years ago. It would have played in the middle of the night on cable or gone straight to DVD and only the diehard fans would have seen it. Because of Netflix, millions more people got to see it.
Q: You’ve been experimenting with how films are distributed and marketed through BH Tilt, your multi-platform release label. Last fall, you released “The Green Inferno” in fewer theaters, and got the word out by relying more heavily on digital promotion than broadcast ads. How is it working?
A: We’re still experimenting. We haven’t had a home run yet and we haven’t struck out either. “The Green Inferno” did as billed, it didn’t break any records. Next up is “The Darkness” on May 13. We believe this is where marketing is going. It’s where young people are. The audience that’s under 25, most of those people see things their friends recommend, and we think that grassroots marking is just becoming more relevant than ever before. You can’t market something that doesn’t deliver. You can’t do that anymore. It raises the bar for all of us who make movies or TV.
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