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Hush

Posted on April 7, 2021

HUSH-A Film Poe Would Have Loved

Dawn Keetley

Synopsis: Centered on a woman who lives alone in the woods and is inexplicably terrorized, Hush distills everything to a single effect—terror.

Released on April 8, 2016, Hush is directed by Mike Flanagan and written by Flanagan and Kate Siegel. Siegel also stars in the film, playing the heroine, Maddie, alongside villain John Gallagher, Jr. (from 10 Cloverfield Lane), identified in the credits only as “The Man.”

I went into this film with virtually no expectations, watching it on the day it landed on Netflix. I was transfixed. It was terrifying from beginning to end, and the performances by Siegel and Gallagher were inspired.

The film’s plot is very simple—and that, I think, is its primary strength (and where Poe comes in, but more on that later).

Maddie (Siegel) lives alone in an isolated house in the woods. An illness at age thirteen left her deaf and mute, isolating her in a still more profound way. As she says via Facetime to her sister, who’s worried about her being alone: “Isolation happened to me. I didn’t pick it.” After a brief visit from her neighbor, Sarah (Samantha Sloyan), the film focuses almost exclusively on “The Man’s” terrorizing of Maddie. He does so, at first, from outside the house, telling her he will only come in after she’s reached the point that she wishes she were dead. The film tracks their extended battle—as he seeks to victimize Maddie and she fights back. Read more

Dawn of the Deaf
Posted on August 29, 2018

The Gifts of Deafness in Horror

Guest Post

There remains debate as to whether deafness and hearing-impairments should be classified as disabilities.  Many, including those within the deaf community and their allies, affirm that deafness is a culture rather than a disability.  Still, others affirm that having a hearing impairment imposes disadvantages on an individual.  We can think of many ways that being deaf brings challenges in common daily life activities- the ringing of a doorbell, the answering the telephone, the knock of a door.  In horror media, deafness may mean missing the screams of loved ones, or not perceiving an audible threat, until the threat is close enough to sense by other means.

Horror characters rely on specific strengths to get through the terror they are experiencing and/ or to survive.  In some examples of television and film, deaf characters utilize their hearing impairments as a gift to fend off the horrors while the hearing characters around them remain vulnerable.  In these instances, we see a paradigm shift from one in which deaf persons suffer incapacities to one in which their deafness relates to a tenacity in the face of terror, even as they  maintain their human vulnerability.

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