The Odd Controversy Around Mike Flanagan's 2016 Thriller Hush

Impressions of the Film

I really like Hush (2016). This is one of the few horror films I’ll watch on multiple occasions because I love the thriller/adventure aspect of this slasher film.

Its storytelling is gentle in the fact that even without a spoken word, you feel so much empathy for the main heroine, and we cheer her on as she struggles through every curveball the killer throws at her as he tries to get into her house. I talk about “Dungeon Sense” a lot in horror. A lot of it has to do with a character's frame of mind and their willingness to work through a problem given the skill set that has been shown to the audience.

I love the way they display this woman's ability to choose clever outcomes because as a writer she is constantly running down every possible path to understanding an outcome of consequence.

Moreover, the more I hear about how this film came to be, this is really a labor of love film. The lead actress and the director wrote it together, and I guess they’re a huge dynamic creative partnership because this is the same duo that brought the world Haunting of Hill House, Bly Manor and, Midnight Mass on Netflix. All three of which I have watched on multiple occasions because they’re just works of art for the horror genre. They are everything I love about horror, and Hush does not disappoint on the expectation.

Budget and Monetary Performance

The estimated budget for this film was bare bones. About $1 Million even the horrible Ouija (2014) (With a 6% on Rotten Tomatoes) had a starter budget of 7$-ish Million.

Being as this was a Netflix release, there are no box office numbers to speak of. However, considering that it has a near-pristine %93 on Rotten Tomatoes, we’ve got to admit, this lines up as this is a gem of an independent film on a shoestring budget.

A terrific modern slasher/thriller, and even got the seal of approval from Stephen King.

-Matt Patches- Polygon 2021

Production

Director: Mike Flanagan

Mike Flanagan is making a stir in the horror industry with his fresh realism in supernatural horror. Logical reasoning to make the word feel sound and easy to escape into. It WAS one of the things that made M. Knight Shyamalan such a household name in 1999 for The Sixth Sense because the twist was so simple and unflashy, just good storytelling. (I know… M.Knight is a good storyteller so long as we never mention Avatar the Last Airbender. That is something that’ll haunt Shyamalan to the end of his career.)

Mike has been making huge splashes with recognizable horror films like Oculus (2013) based on an original short film from Flanagan in 2005. Before I Wake (2016), Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016), and Gerald's Game (2017) based on the Stephen King novel.

His television credits include the worldwide phenomenon of Haunting of Hill House (2018). To date, I believe, this is the only instance where someone took a well-known, beloved intellectual property from Shirly Jackson, created a storyline that was NOTHING like the book, and made it BETTER.

If you’d like to know how poorly a good Shirly Jackson book adaptation to film can go, check out the one with Owen Wilson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Liam Neeson called The Haunting (1998). They even reskinned the book covers to match the film poster with the tagline “Some Houses are born bad.” (Barf.) This adaptation does actually try to implement the original storyline from the book, but the sets and horrible CGI make it difficult to watch.

Mike Flanagan is also the creative behind the second season of The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), which takes liberties from the book “The Turning of the Screw” by Henry James. And finally, let us recognize his recent Netflix TV series Midnight Mass (2021) which sat on the top 10 streaming shows for Netflix for over 2 months.

In the video interview below Mike Flanagan was asked about blood in horror films.

[too much gore] takes it into a whole different place and it almost becomes a comedy I think. People's reactions stop being one of empathy and they stop putting themselves in the shoes of the people in the movie. They start just checking out the gore, and usually, that reaction is a jovial one…When a certain level of gore is seen it makes the [audience] laugh out loud of OHHHH! LOOK AT THAT…. They stop putting themselves as the character and start being a spectator in the Roman coliseum. They’re just there to watch somebody get eaten by a lion.

-Mike Flanagan - 2016

You can watch the full interview on the video link below:

Screenwriting on Hush (2016)

Hush was penned by the director (Mike Flanagan) and the lead actress of the film (Kate Siegel). As a real-life married couple, they were able to role-play the scenarios together. It’s likely why the climax of the film where the leading lady is playing out roles in her head of what does she do next and how does it end feels so solid. The writers specifically attempted it to see how it would go.

The script was a hard sell according to Flanagan. He said the fact that it was more experimental of a horror film by being filmed in a single location, and the fact there was not a lot of actual dialogue meant whoever would pick it had to have a lot of faith they’d need to pull it off almost entirely visually.

When Hush was finally picked up and handed back to Mike and Kate for final drafts they decided to channel their horror inspirations and rented room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Colorado. For those who may be unfamiliar with this. Room 217 is a particular haunted room in the Overlook Hotel inside of Stephen Kings novel The Shining. What’s more, The Stanley where Kate and Mike were staying IS the hotel that inspired The Shining book itself.

Other inspirations were taken from things like Wait Until Dark (1967), and personally my favorite Audrey Hepburn film. And they also mentioned that use of space was inspired by Die Hard (1988).

There is also a particular scene where the leading lady’s hand gets smashed. And the writers had hoped that the audience would feel not just empathy toward the main character's pain, but also the isolating fact that she cannot really communicate with anyone without her hands. She cannot sign, she cannot write anything down. How utterly alone that would make someone feel.

The Cast of Hush (2016)

Kate Siegel

Kate Siegel plays the main deaf character. She married the director Mike Flanagan the same year this film was released in 2016. They collaborated on writing it together by role-playing in their own home. Kate would be inside the house, and Mike attempted to break in and make notes together regarding what pieces they liked, and what slowed it down too much. Ironically, the majority of the film's spoken lines only account for 15 MINUTES of the entire film.

Kate Siegels acting history did include her husbands first large film Oculus in 2013, but apart from her leading star participation in other Mike Flanagan projects like Haunting of Hill House (2018), Midnight Mass (2021), Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), much of her other acting work isn’t very recognizable.

But what this does mean to the Copper Shock crew is that Mike and Kate have found their creative selves in one another and what work they put together rocks the horror world.

In that same interview video above Kate also speaks her mind on gore in horror and how it affects writing for such scenarios:

Kate Siegel on Gore in film:

From a writing point of view, we kept coming back to the touchstone of what is REALLY going to happen next. When someone gets injured in a gory way, there’s not a lot you can do to build on that until you deal with that injury, because as a person in that circumstance you will deal with that first. So you can’t just keep adding gore, and adding gore, and adding gore… you need to deal with every injury as it comes.

-Kate Seigel - 2016

John Gallagher Jr.

John Gallagher Jr. plays our cat and mouse home intruder wanting to kill the leading lady. John’s career has some standout television appearances in the likes of West Wing (1999-2006), and Law and Order. He also had a main character part in 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016).

Samantha Sloyan

Samantha Sloyan plays the deaf writers friend and neighbor who lives next door up the street in the woods. Samantha has had a great career by participating in Scandal (2012-2018), Greys Anatomy (2005-Present), The Haunting of Hill House (2018), And of course Midnight Mass (2021).

Michael Trucco

Michael Trucco I’ve recognized from his early Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009) days, however, others may recognize him from the even older popular television show One Tree Hill (2003-2012). He also held a mini role for a series of episodes on Castle (2009-2016), and How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014). Michael also participated in Midnight Mass (2021) along with his other acting colleagues in this film.

Controversy Over Hush (2016)

There are some in the deaf community who take umbrage with Hush. Stating that many hearing audiences tend to love this film (I’ll admit that is me.) But the deaf community finds some things to be totally lacking.

One of the criticisms had been over the fact that during a signing conversation there were facial expressions that were missed that clearly wouldn’t have been by a fluent ASL (American Sign Language). Specifically around asking a question for any “Who/What/When/Where/Why”, That when signaling a question you are supposed to lower your eyebrows or furrow them in some way to indicate a question. This is similar to speaking aloud to one who hears. We will fluctuate our voice to an “Up” note at the end of the sentence to indicate it’s a question instead of a statement. This is no different for the Deaf community.

There was some disappointment that the lead wasn’t given to someone actually deaf as it is a very small role that would be perfect for someone with this disability. And while Copper Shock can agree with that to a degree, I do also believe that this was a quick production where no one expected much of it (Remember they only had $1 Million to pull it off.)

Kate Siegel at the time did not have many leading roles of her own up through that point, and as she was the force to get this script greenlit, I have no qualms about the fact that she took the opportunity… because she made the opportunity herself. So I do understand the deaf community's dislike of the film as it did not include an actual deaf person. But the competition to be cast at all even for someone without being deaf is hugely steep to begin with anyway, and Kate Siegel is a talented person who represented the best way she knew how.

A plot hole for the deaf community is that the main character's cell phone did not carry any flash alerts. When her neighbor is banging on the main characters glass door for help, The main character doesn’t notice these vibrations. But later in the film when she’s avoiding the killer she can suddenly sense these vibrations a lot more, giving the film some inconsistency.

The main character states she can lip-read well. This is actually a very difficult skill to acquire that under %40 of deaf people have mastered, and even then it usually leads to misunderstandings without additional clarification.