Still (2016)

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Movie
German title Quiet
Original title Hush
Country of production United States
original language English ,
ASL
Publishing year 2016
length 81 minutes
Rod
Director Mike Flanagan
script Mike Flanagan,
Kate Siegel
production Trevor Macy ,
Jason Blum
music The Newton Brothers
camera James Knees
cut Mike Flanagan
occupation
synchronization

Still (original title: Hush ) is an American horror film with thriller elements from 2016. Directed by Mike Flanagan , who had previously directed other horror films, including Absentia , Oculus and Ouija: Origin of Evil . He wrote the script with his wife, actress Kate Siegel , who also plays the leading role.

The film premiered on March 12, 2016 at the South by Southwest film festival , and was released worldwide on Netflix on April 8 of the same year .

The English title Hush means something like to be quiet , but can also correspond to the German Pst as a request .

action

Maddie Young briefly lost her hearing and speech due to meningitis at the age of 13, and eventually became permanently deaf due to malpractice during an operation . She currently lives alone in a house in the woods and earns her living as a writer . When her neighbor and friend Sarah visits her one day to give her back a borrowed book, the two discuss Maddie's writing style. Maddie explains that all of her ideas play out in her head like scenes from a movie , and those scenarios have multiple endings. That same night, Sarah is attacked by a masked man who stabs her. Badly injured, she dragged herself to Maddie's house and knocked desperately on the door. Maddie doesn't notice this, so Sarah is stabbed to death. The man breaks into Maddie while she is video chatting with her sister Max.

Since he quickly realizes that Maddie cannot hear, he steals her mobile phone and takes photos of her, which he sends to her laptop, then he sabotages the fuse box and Maddie's car. When Maddie sees the photos, she locks herself in. The man stands in front of her door shortly afterwards, she writes on the front door with her lipstick that she will not betray him and does not know his face, whereupon he takes off his mask. Maddie distracts him with the help of her car alarm to search Sarah's corpse for a cell phone, which the stranger has also taken with him. When he tries to get into the house through a window, Maddie injures his arm with the tip of a hammer .

Maddie tries repeatedly to get outside through her window, but when this fails, she takes refuge on the roof of her house. The man followed her and shoots her a pin in the leg, Maddie still manages to push him off the roof and his crossbow to take itself. She goes back downstairs, tends her wound and tries to reload the weapon. In the meantime, John, Sarah's significant other, comes home and looks for her. The man poses as a police officer to him, claims that a burglar knocked him down and asks him to use his cell phone to call for reinforcements. Since John notices that the alleged policeman is behaving strangely and is entangled in contradictions, he wants to distract him and knock him down with a stone. Maddie startles John when she knocks on a window, the man uses his distraction and stabs John in the throat .

Although John is already bleeding to death , he still manages to put the man in a headlock and forms the word "run" with his lips. Maddie tries to run away, but the stranger catches up with her and kills her with a stone. However, it turns out that this is only one scenario in Maddie's idea is. She concludes that she cannot hide or escape without being discovered or bleeding to death. So she decides to surprise the man and kill him. When he stands on her porch and threatens her cat with his knife , she shoots him in the shoulder with the crossbow , but she drops the last bolt as she runs back into the house. When she tries to get him, the man jams her hand in the sliding door and brutally breaks it with his boot. Obviously enjoying Maddie's fear of death, he lets go of her for a moment, which allows her to lock the door. When he threatens to break into her house again, she writes "Trust yourself, coward" with her blood on the door. While the man starts smashing the door glass with a tire lever, Maddie goes to her laptop, writes a description of the man and a message for her family, takes a knife and locks herself in the bathroom .

The stranger fails to get in through the door, which is why he enters the bathroom through the hatch in the roof . Maddie feels his breath and just manages to stab his knee . She staggered into the kitchen, her vision already blurred. She sprays the man bug spray in the eyes and weakens its orientation with its very bright and very loud smoke alarms . The stranger finally throws her to the ground and begins to choke her . Maddie makes one last attempt and manages to grab a corkscrew and kill the man with a targeted stab in the throat.

Maddie picks up her cell phone and dials 911. When she sits down on the porch, very dazed, sees the coming police cars and rubs her cat on her leg, she smiles and closes her eyes.

production

The production of the film was initially kept secret, the public only finding out about it when Still was introduced to potential distributors at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival .

Mike Flanagan revealed in an interview that the main character is deaf because he wanted to make a film that has almost no dialogue . Flanagan briefly considered making the film completely silent, but the idea was rejected because it would have been "impossible to build tension". According to Flanagan, the target group is also not used to silent films and therefore either did not watch such a film in the first place or did not concentrate on the plot “ to look for auditory stimuli in their immediate surroundings ”.

The script that Mike Flanagan and his wife Kate Siegel wrote together consisted mainly of scene instructions that the couple acted out in their home. This proved problematic during filming, as Flanagan and Siegel were so used to their own house that they had to heavily rewrite the script because they couldn't find a space similar enough to their home.

Flanagan feared that the silence of the main character and a single location would lose the audience's interest. Therefore, one was for the recordings Steadicam and a boom pole - microphone , used to let act "dynamic" to the movements of the main character seal. The sound of the scenes in question had to be added afterwards because, according to Flanagan, it sounded “like a herd of elephants ”. Among other things, Siegel had to synchronize their breath . In addition, so-called atmospheric noises were used, for example the sounds of a switched on ultrasound device , to depict Maddie’s environment.

reception

In the Internet Movie Database , Still received a 6.6 out of ten star rating based on 72,316 votes cast. On Rotten Tomatoes , the critics' rating is 92 percent, the average rating is 7.6 out of ten. 73 percent of the votes were positive among users, with an average rating of 3.7 out of five. At Metacritic , the critical rating is 67 out of 100, the user votes 7.2 out of ten.

Benjamin Lee, an editor for the Guardian , said Still had "awesome tension" and rated it four out of five stars. Although Variety's Geoff Burkshire criticized the third act, he found the film to be one of the "more inspired inventions of the busy Blumhouse horror-thriller line of recent years." Jasef Wisener the website Screener praised the two main characters, through which the film "succeeded in almost every aspect" and was "one of the best horror movies of modern history."

According to Stephen King , Still is of a similar quality to Halloween - The Night of Horror and Wait Until It's Dark . Also praised was the director William Friedkin , who said in a tweet that the film was great.

synchronization

The synchronization of the film was done at VSI Synchron based on a dialogue book and directed by Jörg Heybrock.

role actor Voice actor
Maddie Young Kate Siegel Nadine Heidenreich
The man John Gallagher Jr. Bastian Sierich
John Stanley Michael Trucco Edwin Gellner
Sarah Greene Samantha Sloyan Tina Haseney
Max Emilia Graves Laurine Betz

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dave McNary: SXSW Unveils Lineup With James Caan, Ethan Hawke, Keegan-Michael Key Movies. In: Variety . March 11, 2016, accessed January 3, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Kate Hereditary Land: Netflix Buys Mike Flanagan's 'Hush' Before SXSW World Premiere. In: Indiewire. March 10, 2016, accessed January 3, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Mike Fleming Jr: 'Hush' Buyer Screening Leaves Buyers Buzzing: Toronto. In: Deadline.com . September 11, 2015, accessed January 3, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Trace Thurman: [Interview] 'Hush' Director Mike Flanagan and Actress Kate Siegel On Their New Thriller! In: Bloody Disgusting. April 7, 2016, accessed January 3, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Lous Peitzman: Meet The Filmmaker Who Wants To Save Horror From Jump Scares. In: BuzzFeed . April 11, 2016, accessed January 3, 2019 .
  6. ↑ a b Michael Gingold: Q&A: HUSH Director Mike Flanagan on the Scary Sounds of Silence. In: Fangoria. June 8, 2016, accessed January 3, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Hush. In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 3, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Hush. In: Metacritic. Retrieved January 3, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Benjamin Lee: Hush review - nifty home invasion thriller offers ingenious suspense. In: The Guardian . April 14, 2016, accessed January 3, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Geoff Burkshire: Film Review: 'Hush'. In: Variety. March 12, 2016, accessed January 3, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Jasef Wisener: 'Hush' (2016) Film Review. In: Screener. April 9, 2016, accessed January 3, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Steve Barton: Stephen King Gets Loud About Hush. In: Dread Central. April 21, 2016, accessed January 3, 2019 .
  13. ↑ William Friedkin: HUSH is a great horror film ... on Netflix. Terrifying. In: Twitter. December 5, 2016, accessed January 3, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Still. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing file , accessed on January 3, 2019 .