Horror movies: Ready or Not, Hush
May. 25th, 2026 09:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lucymonsterReady or Not (2019): On her wedding night, Grace's obscenely rich new in-laws rope her into a family ritual: she must play a game with them, chosen at random by drawing a card from a black box. All but one of the games are harmless; the "but one" is a murderous game of hide-and-seek, where the family has until sunrise to hunt down the target and ritually slaughter them. Guess which card Grace draws.
This was so much fun! Between this and Jennifer's Body, I've started feeling like Adam Brody should be some kind of Big Deal in last decade's horror movies, though Wikipedia tells me he hasn't actually appeared in much else. More to the point, Samara Weaving put on a truly fantastic performance. Grace had a grit and a will to live that were incredible to watch; all she was doing was trying to survive, but she quickly made herself a terror to the rest of the family, and I very much enjoyed her journey to becoming as much of a threat to them as they were to her. Her husband was the kind of spineless sack of shit it feels truly good to hate. I have a little while to wait before the sequel comes down to a sensible rental price on streaming platforms (it is very new and currently costs a full movie ticket amount to watch, but that won't last) and then I'm very much looking forward to seeing the continuation of her adventures.
Hush (2016): Maddie, a deaf woman and successful author, lives alone in the woods to work in peace on her next novel. One night she becomes the target of a sadistic serial killer. This was so damn good. Scary as fuck, sparing but VERY effective with its gore (the hand scene alskjhfalsjffd owwwwww) and has another wonderful female protagonist who never wanted any of this but, since she can't escape it, throws herself into the fight harder than her tormentor could ever have predicted. It is pure chance that I watched this and Ready or Not back to back, but between the fierce table-turning heroines and the hand gore, they make an unexpectedly good pairing, lol. The killer also put in a fantastic performance. I feel like he's going to stick in my head as a memorable villain for exactly how UNmemorable he is: normal dude, personable, casually chatty, utterly sick fuck. He is not the brightest spark, and there more than a few "dude how are you fucking this up so bad" moments, but I don't necessarily have a problem with that; there's no law that says killers all have to be ultracompetent masterminds!
Apparently there's also a TV show called Midnight Mass that is supposed to be an adaptation of Maddie's fictional bestseller. I'm finding TV shows harder to commit to than movies at the moment, but it has good reviews and I'd like to give it a go at some point.
This was so much fun! Between this and Jennifer's Body, I've started feeling like Adam Brody should be some kind of Big Deal in last decade's horror movies, though Wikipedia tells me he hasn't actually appeared in much else. More to the point, Samara Weaving put on a truly fantastic performance. Grace had a grit and a will to live that were incredible to watch; all she was doing was trying to survive, but she quickly made herself a terror to the rest of the family, and I very much enjoyed her journey to becoming as much of a threat to them as they were to her. Her husband was the kind of spineless sack of shit it feels truly good to hate. I have a little while to wait before the sequel comes down to a sensible rental price on streaming platforms (it is very new and currently costs a full movie ticket amount to watch, but that won't last) and then I'm very much looking forward to seeing the continuation of her adventures.
Hush (2016): Maddie, a deaf woman and successful author, lives alone in the woods to work in peace on her next novel. One night she becomes the target of a sadistic serial killer. This was so damn good. Scary as fuck, sparing but VERY effective with its gore (the hand scene alskjhfalsjffd owwwwww) and has another wonderful female protagonist who never wanted any of this but, since she can't escape it, throws herself into the fight harder than her tormentor could ever have predicted. It is pure chance that I watched this and Ready or Not back to back, but between the fierce table-turning heroines and the hand gore, they make an unexpectedly good pairing, lol. The killer also put in a fantastic performance. I feel like he's going to stick in my head as a memorable villain for exactly how UNmemorable he is: normal dude, personable, casually chatty, utterly sick fuck. He is not the brightest spark, and there more than a few "dude how are you fucking this up so bad" moments, but I don't necessarily have a problem with that; there's no law that says killers all have to be ultracompetent masterminds!
Apparently there's also a TV show called Midnight Mass that is supposed to be an adaptation of Maddie's fictional bestseller. I'm finding TV shows harder to commit to than movies at the moment, but it has good reviews and I'd like to give it a go at some point.
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Date: 2026-05-25 12:08 am (UTC)Re: Midnight Mass, yes, that was actually Mike Flanagan's passion project that he'd had in mind for years and years before he got to make it, hence the easter egg in Hush. I like it a lot. And the gal from Hush (who incidentally is also Flanagan's wife) has a role in it.
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Date: 2026-05-25 01:05 am (UTC)Oh cool, so the Midnight Mass concept actually predated Hush, then? I saw the production dates and just assumed it had gone the other way around, but I like that. I guess if you need to invent a piece of fictional media, you might as well make it something you’re actually planning to create!