It's a simple, frequently-utilized premise: put a young woman alone in a house, throw in a white-masked killer and watch the mayhem unfold. In Mike Flanagan's Hush, the young woman in question also happens to be deaf, but based on the first trailer this otherwise looks like a fairly straightforward variation on the same old formula.
In Oculus, Flanagan showed he was capable of mounting a twisty, cerebral, character-driven fright flick, so in some ways this feels like a step back for him. Feels. Obviously, I can't know how it all plays out until I see the thing, and I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. We'll presumably know more once the film makes its festival debut Saturday night at SXSW. For the rest of us, Hush is slated to premiere April 8 on Netflix.