Hush

http://mrshowbiz.go.com/reviews/moviereviews/movies/Hush_1998.html

--Kevin Maynard


The poster tagline for Hush reads: oDonAt breathe a word.o ItAs no
wonder the adAs so cryptic, no one at Sony wants you to know how bad
the movie really is. But the buzz was bad to begin with. This campy
psycho-thriller was initially called Kilronan, the name of the
Kentucky estate run by mad matriarch Martha Baring (Jessica Lange)
in the film. Then, it was renamed Bloodline, but with all due respect
to Sidney SheldonAs literary masterpiece, the title changed yet again.
Reshoots and rewrites later, hereAs Hush and itAs an unintentional
hoot. In fact, if you like your scenery well chewed and your plot
points telegraphed early on, then you might have a good time.

Basically a Southern riff on Rebecca (with a mother-in-law from hell
instead of a freaky housekeeper) the film stars young lovelies
Gwyneth Paltrow and Johnathon Schaech as Helen and Jackson, a New
York City couple who visit his mother at her sprawling family home.
Helen immediately bonds with the possessive but adoring Martha
because her own parents died when she was young. Then when the duo
returns home, Helen discovers sheAs pregnant (sheAs clued in when
she vomits all over her fellow employees at a business meeting). To
top it off, she gets held at knifepoint by a mugger in her own
apartment. Hoping to get away from the urban nightmare, the couple
decides to have the child at Kilronan, where they can also help
Martha fend off nasty developers. But Helen doesnAt count on
MarthaAs monstrous scheming to keep her grandchild all to herself.

Hokey pleasures abound from the get go: Jessica Lange delivers an
arch grande dame performance, perpetually smoking and stalking
sultrily around her Ethan Allen-cum-Laura Ashley estate. In a cooing,
singsong voice, she spits out lines like, oYouAre going to steal away
my little baby boy. But here, youAll learn how to bake bread and
shovel horseshit.o Luckily, she doesnAt take the role even remotely
seriously; in fact, sheAs seems to be spoofing her past work as
Blanche DuBois and Frances Farmer. My favorite scene is the playfully
incestuous one in which she hoses down the delectably bare-chested
Jackson. All Schaech (That Thing You Do!) has going for him are his
perfectly chiseled features—he plays this witless mamaAs boy with
one facial expression. HeAs so bad, in fact, that heAs primed to be
the Troy Donahue of the nineties. Gwyneth Paltrow has the best line
of all: oI am pushing, you bitch!o she screams after she eats a piece
of MarthaAs homemade strawberry cheesecake pumped with labor-inducing
horse pills.

Eventually, as a result of the lousy plotting, the fun subsides.
Jonathan Darby directs with an anemic Hitchcockian style; he canAt
even convincingly film a Vertigo-like sequence down a flight of
steps. But worst of all, his schlocky movie ofrom hello deprives us
of the subgenreAs most guilty pleasure: the gratuitous climax.
Without any boiled bunnies or steamy showers, Hush should be retitled
Yawn to more aptly reflect the experience of watching it.