Hush, 1998

Hush, 1998
Director: Jonathan Darby
Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Lange, Johnathon Schaech


Stage: Home theatre, Sunday night


Hush in short: Helen is the young girlfriend of good-looking Jackson Baring. When Helen gets pregnant and marries Jackson, they decide to move to his hometown, Kilronan, and have a baby there. But his mother Martha, who lives there, starts to do weird things, and obviously she's not too friendly to Helen.



Preps: Gwyneth, mmmm. Need to see it, not aware of the movie or the entities it has or sets. Therefore, a blind walk in the park it is.


Reality: Well, it is hard to become a fan of this movie. It is a mixture of a really bad teenage movie on the topic of bad mothers and something that remotely resembles Single White Female or the Roomate, however, from a perspective of a mother that has a mixture of complexes and a husband, that doesn't really have Oedipus complex, but is nearly there.
It could be really a good piece, but the delivery is a disaster. Since I am a huge fan of Paltrow, I wanted to see it, still it lead me to a huge dissappointment. The act of Lange should also be better, they somehow don't seem to connect in the negative way, as they should, the stepdaughter and mother. They are supposed to express hatred towards each other, but they are cool as ice.
I don't really get where the director was leading to, but I was eager to know how far the mother will go and what is the story behind. You always know there is a story behind the scenes, the one you get to know in the process or somewhere by the end. The Oedipus complex is broken just at the end, as the truth reveals and the mother is left alone. However, at this point I should feel hate towards her, not sadness and some sort of compassion. Brings out the topic from before – what was the director thinking?

The movie is fairly old and I get that also in 1998 they didn't have special effects or something. Still, the movie feels like being dragged from a decade before it was actually made. The scenery, the photography, the costumography, music.. obsolete. The way of acting.. naive and obsolete. I didn't like it and it didn't make me anxious for more. The only thing that provoked in me, and that might be the only good thing about this movie, is curiosity. I wanted to know the story and it kept me alive until the end.

So watch it, if you are a fan of the main cast. Otherwise, a waste of energy.


My personal rating: 4,0 (well, if I had to choose, I wouldn't take the second look at this piece. It is made as a TV movie and I am not surprised it never appeared before in my radar. Don't waste your time.)


Hush on IMDB