A Disquieting Lack of Suspense in ‘Hush’

It’s probably not the filmmaker’s fault that “Hush” is being peddled as a family-pathology slasher film, like “The Stepfather” or “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.” Still, the prospect of catching Jessica Lange in a late-period Bette Davis role, as a smother-mother gargoyle, is bound to attract some unwary thrill-seekers. And they are bound to be disappointed.

“Hush” is a would-be suspense film without a single major plot twist that isn’t ham-handed. You can spot every portentous clue the second director Jonathan Darby shoves your nose in, usually in a giant close-up. Flashing neon arrows might make the plot signals easier to read, but only slightly.

The movie’s legitimate ancestors are such Golden Age gothic romances as “Rebecca,” in which an ingenuous willowy young thing is introduced into the claustrophobic atmosphere of a sinister family manse, and then menaced until all the household’s dark secrets are revealed.

Long-stemmed Gwyneth Paltrow, as Helen, has the Joan Fontaine beleaguered-innocent part, an awkward Christmas guest at the palatial Virginia horse-breeding estate of her architect boyfriend, Jackson (Johnathon Schaech) and Martha, his filterless-Camel-puffing widowed mom.

Martha wants her beloved son to return home and take over the family business, which has been on the skids recently, and her interest in breeding seems to have shifted focus from thoroughbred foals to thoroughbred grandchildren.

Lange provides Momma Martha with an impressive array of quivery seductive mannerisms; she simpers and shrugs and toys with her frizzy curls, wired and watchful. We can practically hear the gears meshing. Lange seems to be having fun with this jittery, crafty character, but her weirdness is so overt that it strains credulity.

“Hush” deploys many classic visual indicators of suspense; maybe a few too many. There are strange murmuring interludes in front of bedroom mirrors, a shower of stiff rat corpses from an attic trap door and the looming shadow of a huge veterinary syringe, gliding across the floor toward a helpless woman in the throes of childbirth.

Nothing works, and almost nothing pays off. The transformation of victim into aggressor, just in time for the limp finale, is so abrupt and unmotivated that it doesn’t deliver a satisfying table-turning charge. Jackson’s character is a blank, and Schaech is from the Victor Mature-Peter Gallagher class of bland handsomeness. He’s a trophy hunk.

The strangest aspect of “Hush” is its seeming squeamishness about the clingy central relationship. It introduces with leers, and then primly dances away from, the obvious possibility that Martha’s feelings toward her strapping son are not altogether healthy. The pivotal issue seems to be class rather than family. Martha is typed as a social climber, a former stable girl who set her sights on the young lord of the manor and has been scheming ever since to scoop up all the marbles.

All the good people in the film are bluebloods, and all the proles are predatory. (Helen’s social standing isn’t specified, but nobody in movies looks more effortlessly aristocratic than Paltrow.)

So it isn’t mother-love but a thirst for status that shoves poor Martha off the deep end. That’s a less than enthralling premise, and Lange never does get a chance to cut loose.

* MPAA rating PG-13 for some violence, sensuality and brief strong language. Times guidelines: mild by the standards of recent suspense films.

‘Hush’

Jessica Lange: Martha

Gwyneth Paltrow: Helen

Johnathon Schaech: Jackson

Nina Foch: Alice

Hal Holbrook: Dr. Hill

Debi Mazer: Lisa

A TriStar Pictures Presentation of a Douglas Wick Production. Director Jonathan Darby. Producer Douglas Wick. Co-producer Ginny Nugent. Screenplay by Jonathan Darby and Jane Rusconi; from a story by Darby. Director of photography Andrew Dunn. Editors Dan Rae, Lynzee Klingman, Robert Leighton. Costume designer Ann Roth. Music Christopher Young. Production designers Thomas A. Walsh and Michael Johnston. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

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* In general release throughout Southern California.