Hush

The latest low-budget British feature from the Film 4/Warp X scheme that produced ‘Donkey Punch’ is inventive and ably directed, but falls a little short as genre horror. Employing the service stations and slip roads of the Yorkshire stretch of a rainy M1, it sees warring young couple Zakes (Will Ash) and Beth (Christine Bottomley) spy a caged, naked woman through the tailgate of a lorry. Beth suggests they investigate; Zakes wants to leave it to the police. But Beth goes missing, Zakes’s phone goes dead (naturally), he’s suspected of killing a security guard and has to take matters into his own hands. So the ordeal begins.

Characterised by pleasing work from DoP Philipp Blaubach, some clever, surely improvised set-ups and a welcome unhistrionic central turn from Ash, writer-director Mark Tonderai’s debut makes for a smart calling card but relies on one tension-destroying cliché too many and offers too few thrills to satisfy the hardened horror buff.