BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Python Hyena Hush (1998): Dir: Jonathan Darby / Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Lange, Jonathan Schaech, Hal Holbrook, Nina Foch: Thriller about enduring deep secrets. It is a cruel exercise in extreme tastelessness. Jonathan Schaech and Gwyneth Paltrow are expecting their first child and are welcomed into his mother's ranch. It is clear from the get go that his mother doesn't like her. Paltrow hears stories that aren't exactly true and could have been set straight had Schaech was not so darn gullible. Plot is predictable and pathetically vile. We learn the truth about Schaech's father's death, and while it can be said that his mother is a monster, there is never a winner in a mother, son, wife battle especially given the pathetic ending resulted here. Director Jonathan Darby makes it as graphic and disgusting as possible from a birth sequence to a needle jabbing scene. Good locations are the only pleasant aspects. Paltrow basically follows formula while Jessica Lange makes the mother look guilty from everything right down to her stupid nervous chuckle. Schaech is given the biggest airhead role as son. Hal Holbrook also appears to give Paltrow information. Perhaps if he gave her directions off the movie set he could have saved her from taking part in one of her worst films. Hush is repulsive cinematic trash that is an insult to mothers everywhere. The title represents how the studio should have marketed it. Score: 2 / 10

Leofwine_draca Yeah, this is a late entry in that psycho-thriller sub-genre of the early 1990s, and the second you discover that the film sat on the shelf for two years before release you know it's going to be a stinker. When actress Jessica Lange herself described it in less than complimentary terms the instinct is to hurl it onto the fire and get as far away as possible.Nevertheless, I sat through this in its entirety, glutton for punishment as I am. And it's a weak thriller for sure, in which the thrills are non-existent and the plot is even more laboured than Gwyneth Paltrow's character. Basically, she meets and falls for the perfect guy, falls pregnant and marries him, only to discover that her new mother-in-law holds more than a few dark secrets and is already obsessed with the unborn child.The feel of the movie has more in common with a lukewarm TV movie of the era than a theatrical film and indeed there's very little of interest here. Most of the film relies on acting from a very average Paltrow to get by, and her protagonist is hardly a sympathetic one. Lange is better, channelling some of the energy of the grand old matriarch psychos (think Joan Crawford in WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?), but her performance alone does not a good film make.

DeeDeex10 I thought this was a great suspense thriller. Both Gweneth Paltrow and Jessica Lange were fantastic. As a horse owner, I tend to nit-pick inaccurate "goofs" pertaining to the use of horses, as their usually is, but in this one, I didn't notice any. I loved the interaction with the Grandmother and one had to wonder throughout the film how the grandmother was going to portray a role in the outcome. As a woman, a Mother, a wife and who had a domineering Mother-in-law, I kept rooting for Paltrow's character to smack Lang's character and do what needed to be done, not to mention what I would have wanted to do while feeling I had to suck up to my own M.I.L. to keep a marriage intact.

dsvoss Gwyneth Paltrow's character gets pregnant and marries into a messed-up family. When the weirdness starts to look dangerous, the audience has lots of suspects. Mom might be neurotic and even a little bit deranged, but it's not clear she's psychotic enough to be responsible; the truly nasty stuff is always done off screen. Her son behaves oddly at times, and there's so much talk about horse breeding that one can imagine a plausible conspiracy involving any combination of the peripheral characters as well. The only thing certain is that Paltrow and her baby had better watch out.It's not a bad thriller, contrary to many of the reviews I've read. Jessica Lange nicely takes us through Mom's rapid mood swings, keeping the audience uncomfortable and unsettled. The other significant characters are ambiguous enough that, while putting forward pleasant faces, they all seem to be hiding a dark side. And the visual images are superb; definitely NOT B-movie quality stuff.The main problem is the fragmented nature of the plot. Some points are developed at length, but other developments needing explanation fly by -- and if you watch the trailer, which contained lots of scenes that never appeared in the movie, the reason for the haste must be that tons of material landed on the cutting-room floor. Seems as though the director let this horse get away from him. But if you can focus on the uncertainty surrounding who is really manipulating Paltrow and why they are doing it, you can enjoy this one.