Hush (1998) *

Directed by:  Johnathan Darby

Starring:  Jessica Lange, Gywneth Paltrow, Jonatahn Schaech, Hal Holbrook, Nina Foch

This is one of the strangest thrillers I've seen in many a moon.    It's all setup and no payoff.    Is it a psychological thriller?    Is it a slasher film?    I think it's the former, but it contains many elements of the latter, so much so that I expected the two female leads to be fighting to the death atop a very high place.    Or the villain would be impaled on a barn tool.    Or something.     In any event, Hush requires many of its characters to behave stupidly or else the whole thing would be over in fifteen minutes, which wouldn't have been a bad thing.

Hush begins with a New York man named Jackson (Schaech) and his fiancée, Helen (Paltrow) visiting the Virginia horse farm where he grew up.    It is run by his mother Martha (Lange), a mannerly, smothering woman who has run the place since her husband died years earlier from a fall.     She wants Jackson to stay around and help her run the farm, but his life with Helen in his in New York, so they leave much to her dismay.  

Without giving away too many plot spoilers, Helen becomes pregnant and one night is attacked by a seemingly random mugger with a Southern accent.    Hmmm.     The frightened Jackson and Helen decide to take some time away from New York to help Martha renovate the farm.    Martha helps Helen through her pregnancy, but almost acts as if she is the expectant mother rather than Helen.    She slowly and creepily begins to drive a wedge between Helen and Jackson.    She spreads rumors about Helen around town and keeps a very distant relationship from her mother-in-law whom she had stashed away in a nursing home.     The mother-in-law is a kindly old lady who seems to know whatever information the heroine needs any time she needs it.    She also nurtures suspicions about Martha's intentions and for good reason.

This all sounds like it's building to something, but it doesn't.     If you're going to set up Martha as a sociopath, then is it too much to ask that she gets a satisfactory comeuppance?     I'm not necessarily into slasher violence, but at least play by the rules.     Hush is a battle between the pregnant Helen and Martha.    I've never seen a movie before in which the villain's infliction of pain on her victim is natural childbirth without drugs.     It's silly if you think about it and it's even sillier to see it.

There are only two men in the film (not counting the mugger) that are involved in the plot in any way.    Both are clueless and don't seem to harbor suspicions about anyone.     Jackson spends so much time away that I forgot at times where he was supposed to be.    The other man is a kindly obstetrician (Holbrook) who breaks more than a few HIPPA laws by divulging information on Helen's condition to Martha.     He even helpfully suggests inducing labor by using horse tranquilizers.     I won't even try and figure out how he knows that.    Such advice sounds like a one-way ticket to getting your medical license revoked.

The actors are pros and do the best they can with an absurd plot.    Lange is slyly menacing, but it is distracting that she is either holding a drink or a cigarette in her hand as some sort of prop in nearly all of her scenes.    Paltrow's Helen is a nice woman who intuits what's happening, but can't seem to convince her dopey husband of anything until the end when he suddenly decides to behave as if he has a brain.      What we have here is a thriller that doesn't thrill.