Hush (2008)

★★½
Hush (2008) is a taut little thriller taking place on a rainy night. It has a small cast and makes use of only a few locations. Like Duel's menacing truck driver, we have a villain here who drives a truck and remains largely unseen. I came across the trailer on a D.V.D. while I was watching another movie, and the concept intrigued me. Along a U.K. motorway, Zakes (William Ash) and girlfriend Beth (Christine Bottomley) tail a white cargo truck, the back door for which opens by accident and reveals a woman locked in a cage. That was enough for me. Movies with simple premises like this depend on imagination and clever plotting to make up for the lack of characters and settings, so seeing a movie like this succeed in achieving its objectives is very satisfying. There are hits and misses, to be sure, but the good ones, like the misunderstood Open Water, are treasures that are worth the trip to uncover.

Hush does not stand tall among its contemporaries, but it works well enough to consider a viewing as time well invested. Zakes and Beth have a frayed relationship. Their trip along the motorway consists mostly of tense quarreling. A white truck passes them while Beth is asleep, and the back door opens momentarily to reveal someone trapped. Zakes wakes up Beth, and they consider their options, an act that of course devolves into more arguing between the two. His job is to replace posters at service stops. Zakes has already called the police, so he and Beth go up ahead to pull into the next station, but the truck eventually pulls into the same one, where Zakes and Beth contemplate their next move. He decides to get a closer look at the truck. Beth has had enough of the drama, so she heads off by herself, which leads to her disappearance and Zakes' involvement only increasing now that his girlfriend may have been abducted.

Zakes follows the truck to its next destination, but the plot thickens when he becomes the suspect in a murder. The trouble piles on for the hero as he gets closer to the goal. Much of the suspense comes from Zakes' pursuit of the driver and the obstacles he faces along the way. The script limits his resources so that he can only rely on the few tools he has on him. His cell phone is low on battery power. He has no weapons. Any help he can find will be limited. Where this story goes is not certain. Largely unreleased in the U.S., Hush came out around the same time as Shuttle, though where you lived at the time would play a role in which one you saw first. Both films deal with human trafficking as the theme, and if you happened to see Shuttle first, then you might be reminded of its bleak conclusion. Is Hush bold enough to end in a similar way?

The search for Beth turns frantic, and writer/director Mark Tonderai keeps things interesting mostly by treating the story logically. Zakes isn't stupid, and neither is the antagonist. The action moves away from the motorway and into the countryside, yet the same sense of isolation dominates the story. Just like in the car, Zakes has few options on foot. Only when the story takes us to the location of the climax does he gain any kind of advantage, and even then, he must rely on his wits to get the better of his opponent. William Ash makes a capable lead. The script calls for an unassuming young man to deal with the sudden stress of chasing a dangerous foe to rescue his girlfriend, and Ash is up to the task. Against an antagonist who has almost no presence and creates no character for himself, Ash pulls double duty, conveying Zakes' heroism and the threat against him at the same time.

Hush is an effective little movie. There's suspense throughout the narrative. Once it is over, though, there is really nothing left to contemplate. It gets the job done with no lingering aftertaste. I acknowledge the skill that went into its creation. The story hits all the right notes, but when the credits roll, there is no need to sit silently and ponder what we've seen. It doesn't dig its way into the subconscious and establish itself in a memorable way. That's okay. Mark Tonderai's thriller is an exercise in economical filmmaking. It has an interesting premise, and it explores that premise to a sensible conclusion, which includes a neat cat-and-mouse chase that ends with an amusing (and improbable) surprise. Hush belongs on a small list of abduction movies like Breakdown that features a distressed man looking for his loved one. This movie doesn't measure up to that 1997 release, but it has enough moments to make it solid enough.

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