Hush . Newcity Chicago . 03-09-98

Hush

DIRECTED BY: Jonathan Darby

REVIEWED: 03-09-98

Shamelessly risible, "Hush" is a husk of a middling Gothic struggling to pass as an upscale thriller. The plot's on the poster: horse-breeding mom Jessica Lange gets perniciously peevish when son Johnathon Schaech returns from Manhattan with nasal, sparkling will o' the wisp girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow. There's not much more to it than that, if you discount the labor-inducing strawberry shortcake. Variously retitled, its release long-delayed, the film betrays many telltale signs of hopeful tinkering: a great deal of dialogue spoken off-camera, apparently added in several stages of re-editing and dialogue replacement; a whippet-thin running time; agile leaps from one cardboard complication to another, yet retaining a panoply of establishing shots that gratuitously crane-up and capture meaningless vistas or tableaux. Ripe yet overly genteel gyne-guignol, the story's lowlights include cross-cutting a painful birth and a horse race ("I am pushing, you bitch," brays Paltrow); the saucy Nina Foch, as an elder family member in a nursing home, remarking on a framed amniocentesis offered as a gift, "This'll be a big hit around here; nuns love a fetus"; and of course, a ludicrous denouement courtesy of the would-be killer who 'splains it all for you, Lucy. Anyone hoping to take pleasure from the thrills and chills of "Hush" may want to check out here, but for everyone else, be reassured that Paltrow's character, unlike the filmmakers, gives a live birth.

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