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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

BD impressions: Hush

10:44 AM / BD Impressions / 1 Comment

Were it not for the fact that My Bloody Valentine 3D and The Unborn both came out this year, I'd be calling Hush the worst horror movie of 2009. Bankrolled by the usual hodge-podge of lottery funds and music-labels-cum-film-distributors, it takes a reasonably interesting premise and proceeds to utterly destroy it thanks to an idiotic script and cack-handed direction. The setup is interesting: a young couple, whose relationship is on the rocks, are heading along the M1 late at night in the middle of a rainstorm. There's a hold-up, and they find themselves stuck behind a lorry. As the vehicle comes to a halt, its back door jolts open momentarily, revealing a naked woman chained up in the back, screaming for help. Interesting, you might think, but first-time director Mark Tonderai seems more interested in the tedious bickering between the annoying couple, whose character motivation, dialogue and performances range from implausible to downright embarrassing. When he finally does remember the actual point of the movie, he lurches from one unbelievable setup to another, throwing in twist after idiotic twist, leaving way too much unexplained and mistaking running around in the dark with the camera flailing around for actual tension.

Image quality: This looks to be a decent release from Optimum of material that suffered from some significant problems to begin with, a lot of wobbly, hand-held camerawork and some less than stellar focus pulling, which seems to spend more time focusing on the backgrounds than on the actors. The blacks also appear to have been elevated - a major problem given how much of the film takes place in the dark - but this appears to have been a deliberate choice made at the colour timing stage: the fact that the opening and closing credits appear against "true" black rules out the master simply having had its brightness boosted. When the camera operator does manage to focus properly on something, detail is impressive, and the pronounced grain structure is visible at all times, without any hint of erosion. For some reason (time and budgetary constraints, perhaps), a couple of scenes have been shot digitally, and these are easily distinguishable from the rest of the movie because the shutter speed doesn't match, giving these moments a cheap video look; see Example 14. This can hardly be held against the disc itself, though - a solid effort which makes the most of what it's given. 9/10

Hush
studio: Optimum; country: UK; region code: B; codec: VC-1;
file size: 14.8 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 24.32 Mbit/sec

1 Comment

 
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