Hush is a 1998 film starring Gwyneth Paltrow as a young newlywed woman named Helen who is happily married to a good looking guy called Jackson.But when she and Jackson move from their apartment in New York to stay with Jackson's mother Martha(Jessica Lange from The Vow)as Helen is expecting her and Jackson's first child together,things take a sour turn as Jackson's mother is a very crazy woman who killed her husband and lost her unborn child many years ago and blames her son (brainwashing him saying that he pushed him down the stairs as she heard that he was having an affair with another woman or was he?) and she would do all in her power to prevent her son from leaving her again and would even go to great lengths to take Helen's baby even if she has to try and deliver it earlier than planned. So will Helen escape Jackson's crazy mother once and for all and learn more secrets about Martha's past, and convince Jackson that his mother is crazy and delusional?Bottom line this happened to be on cable a few days ago and I have seen it before. To be honest I thought it was a pretty solid flick. It had me on the edge of my seat and I though Paltrow was very good in this movie. But the real star is Jessica Lange who plays the crazy delusional mother to Jackson as she does crazy things like using a thing for horses so that Helen could have her child early and deliver it at home herself(Martha)and later at the very end of the movie she even tries to kill Helen by giving her morphine.Like I said give this movie a chance and ignore the critics. This is the kind of film you would have in your films I like that no one else like's list.C+ 6/10

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.

Even way back in 1998, the question would have been a valid one: does the world really need yet another of the "mother in law hates the new daughter in law for taking her son away from her so she sets out to destroy her" movies? Really - hasn't this been done to death? Well, in 1998 somebody decided that, indeed, another one was needed - and the end result was this rather unoriginal story that doesn't do anything that other movies of this type haven't already done.Frankly, the only thing that saved this was the performance of Jessica Lange as Martha Baring, the obsessively jealous and controlling mother in law. Lange, I thought, did a good job with her character. At first, Martha seems almost normal and welcoming of her new daughter in law Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow). But she gradually becomes more and more menacing and by the end borders on the insane, and that was all brilliantly pulled off by Lange, who made an otherwise bland movie worth watching.Unfortunately, one superb performance can't save an otherwise weak movie. (4/10)

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.