RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Davis P Hush (1998) is a thriller about a new mother in law who's hiding a dark secret. It stars Jessica Lange, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Johnathon Schaech. I love thrillers and mysteries, especially when it features actors and actresses I like. I am a big Lange and Paltrow fan, they are both great actresses. They turn in fine performances here, to be honest Jessica Lange is the best part. If the cast had been different I'm not sure I would've liked this film at all. It does have flaws, the writing is average at best and it's not the most exciting thriller to watch. I'm only giving Hush a 7/10 because of how much I enjoyed the performances. I was disappointed by the script, I thought it had a lot more potential. The potential wasn't completed wasted, but a good bit of it was and it could've been a lot better.

raisleygordon In theory, "Hush" sounds like an ideal movie, but I'm afraid the results leave a lot to be desired. How in the world did these actors, especially Gwyneth Paltrow, get duped into participating in this project? Everyone is phoning in their performances here. This is a movie you might as well be listening to on the radio. The "story", not that there is much of one, is this: A New York couple, Jackson and Helen, are visiting his mother, Martha, for the holidays. She smokes, drinks, and tries to tear this couple apart (from what I can recall, anyway). The closest any of these characters get to being menacing, is when Helen (Jessica Lange's character) changes the temperature in the hot tub her mother is bathing in at the spa (or wherever the tub is). I didn't buy the story, I wasn't engaged, and I didn't care about the characters (or what would eventually happen to them). The things that happen, happen simply because the screenplay requires it to.** out of ****

JasparLamarCrabb Unbelievably bad. Writer/director Jonathan Darby concocts a ridiculous southern fried horror tale. Jessica Lange, channeling both Blanche Dubois AND Baby Jane Hudson, runs a horse farm and is visited by son Johnathon Schaech and new bride Gwyneth Paltrow. Oedipal mayhem ensues. Lange, unable to let Schaech go, terrorizes Paltrow. By the time Paltrow winds up in bed giving birth the film reaches a frenzied level of camp. It's always a curiosity how good actors end up in such dreck. It's a wonder if Lange, Schaech and Paltrow read the script, a half-baked amalgamation of Tennessee Williams and Tobe Hooper. While the supporting cast is populated with the dependable Hal Holbrook, Nina Foch, and Debi Mazer, they bring very little to the film. Foch is used merely to explain the motives of the deranged Lange. Lange's performance takes it's place next to Faye Dunaway's Joan Crawford in the pantheon of American Kabuki.

dsvoss Gwyneth Paltrow's character gets pregnant and marries into a messed-up family. When the weirdness starts to look dangerous, the audience has lots of suspects. Mom might be neurotic and even a little bit deranged, but it's not clear she's psychotic enough to be responsible; the truly nasty stuff is always done off screen. Her son behaves oddly at times, and there's so much talk about horse breeding that one can imagine a plausible conspiracy involving any combination of the peripheral characters as well. The only thing certain is that Paltrow and her baby had better watch out.It's not a bad thriller, contrary to many of the reviews I've read. Jessica Lange nicely takes us through Mom's rapid mood swings, keeping the audience uncomfortable and unsettled. The other significant characters are ambiguous enough that, while putting forward pleasant faces, they all seem to be hiding a dark side. And the visual images are superb; definitely NOT B-movie quality stuff.The main problem is the fragmented nature of the plot. Some points are developed at length, but other developments needing explanation fly by -- and if you watch the trailer, which contained lots of scenes that never appeared in the movie, the reason for the haste must be that tons of material landed on the cutting-room floor. Seems as though the director let this horse get away from him. But if you can focus on the uncertainty surrounding who is really manipulating Paltrow and why they are doing it, you can enjoy this one.