We’re continuing the celebrate the Netflix release of Mike Flanagan‘s slasher, Hush, which stars co-writer Kate Siegel as a deaf woman who is stalked by a psychotic killer (10 Cloverfield Lane‘s John Gallagher Jr.) in her secluded home.
Last week we shared an in-depth piece in which Flanagan revealed the secret to creating authentic scares in a horror film.
Now, we talked to the filmmaker about Hush‘s inspirations, working with silence, as well as sound, and his thoughts on gore/violence in a slasher film.
They say movies are about “showing” a story, not “telling” one. With Hush, Flanagan wanted to challenge himself into making a film with little to no dialogue.
“I’d long wanted to do a film without dialog,” Flanagan explained in our exclusive interview. “It’s such a challenge. It forces you to tell a story strictly visually, and that’s a real blast. Kate [Siegel] and I were talking about how much suspense can be generated when the audience is aware of something that a protagonist is not, and how that played so well in movies like ‘Wait Until Dark.’ When we talked about having a deaf protagonist, we both thought it would provide some fantastic narrative opportunities for suspense.?
Sound is extremely important, especially in a movie about a blind woman. Hush had some of the best horror sound design I have ever heard, which was intricate in the impact of the slasher.
“Sound is crucial to the genre in general, but never more so for me than with this movie,” adds Flanagan. “We knew going in that sound would become its own character in this film. Typically, you want good sound design to help tell the story without calling attention to itself – in our case, it needed to call almost ALL of the attention to itself. It would be front and center for long stretches of the movie.
“It’s an incredibly complicated sound design,” he continues. “During production, the camera was almost always steadicam, which means that during takes you’d hear footsteps of the whole crew moving with Kate. You’d also hear me shouting out cues the whole time, because that was the only way to choreograph Kate, John, and the camera during takes. So all of our “ambient” sound had to be built again in post production.
“Then, our ‘silence’ also had to be built… you can’t actually just ‘pull sound out’ of a movie like this, even though that’s how I’ve heard it described. When we’re in Maddie’s perspective, we’re actually hearing a lot of complicated sounds that give us the IMPRESSION of silence. Otherwise, people wouldn’t actually be hearing silence… if we really pulled the sound out, they’d be hearing popcorn being munched, or phones vibrating, or their own shuffling in their seats. Or their house settling. We needed a soundscape that would cover all of those noises, but make you feel like “all the sound went away.
“It’s extraordinarily complex.”
Hush is a slasher, though, and while visuals and sound are key, it’s got to deliver the horror goods. Flanagan speaks to balancing violence and gore in a way that’s not exploitative, and focuses more on character than death and mayhem.
“I do not,” exclaimed Flanagan when we asked if he thinks gore and violence are a necessity in a slasher. “These are movies about the threat of violence, so the idea of it is present even before a drop of blood is spilled. There is only one act of violence in ‘The Strangers’ and it comes at the very, very end… the movie could have worked just as well if we didn’t see it, in my opinion.
“What you don’t want is for violence and gore to become more important than character and structure. A lot of slasher movies from the eighties were only focused on violence and gore, which robs the human beings in the story of any empathetic reaction from the audience, and instead makes them cheer for the gore. I’m not really into that kind of storytelling. I don’t think it appeals to our better natures, and I don’t think it makes filmmakers better storytellers.
“On the flip side, sometimes violence and gore can be used to make profound statements about human nature… I am still haunted by ‘Martyrs,’ which uses both to a degree that is truly art. So they can be used brilliantly, but are not necessary by any means.
Hush, now streaming on Netflix is a stunning and gorgeous piece of cinema that’s as thrilling and tense as they come. Kalyn reviewed the film, stating that “Silence is the most frightening tool of all,” while Trace explained that it’s “a fist-pumping female empowerment film while at the same time an incredibly suspenseful home invasion thriller.”