Excellent but underrated film

As Good As It Gets

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Upstanding family man Holland Price (a solid and likable performance by Brad Loree) has both his wife and daughter taken away from him by mysterious psychotic stranger Mr. Hush (deliciously played with lip-smacking evil relish by Edward X. Young). In the wake of this tragedy Holland decides to move to another town to star a new life for himself. However, Mr. Hush shows up again to further torment Holland. Writer/director David Lee Madison relates the engrossing story at a steady pace, takes time to develop the credible true-to-life characters, grounds the fantastic premise in a believable sleepy small town reality, neatly captures a fun'n'festive Halloweenish ooga-booga atmosphere, and tops everything off with a wickedly funny sense of campy pitch-black humor. Moreover, Lee Madison warrants extra praise for downplaying special effects in favor of focusing instead on the plot and characters. Stephen Geoffreys delivers a delightfully manic turn as Mr. Hush's pathetic cackling lackey Stark. In addition, there are sturdy thespic contributions from Jessica Cameron as Holland's sweet wife Julie, Connie Giordano as the perky Debbie, Alexis Lauren as spunky teenager Kat, Tim Dougherty as Holland's loyal pal Donald, and Thomas J. Churchill as the earnest Sheriff Churchill. Brian O'Halloran of "Clerks" fame has an amusing small part at the very end. Cinematographer Jack Schaefer's expert use of a hand-held camera provides an extra kinetic buzz. Marco Werba's elegant shivery score does the spine-tingling trick. A cool little fright flick.

This a hard one to review for me because I personally know one of the actresses in the movie: Jessica Cameron. She was going to be on a film we were making around the same time she was making this one but I think she pulled out to make this one. I'm not sure. Since then, she was excited to work on a project that I'm about to start in the next year. I know she was promoting Mr. Hush pretty hard, and I only recently got a chance to watch it. Oh man.....It started off with a little promise. The directing was a little awful but I liked the camera they used. The camera man couldn't hold it worth a crud at times, but it was passable. Also the editing sucked too, okay so everything behind the scenes wasn't up to par! But I liked the acting! Jessica did well with her part, even with her awful lines, she was able to deliver it as convincing as she could. The actor who looked like Thomas Hayden Church seemed pretty good.Then Mr. Hush came dressed up as Father Flannigan and everything went to crap. He ends up holding a knife to Jessica's throat as Thomas Hayden Church goes into defensive stance. There's no build up, no suspense, it just happens. Then nothing but hammy acting is displayed and everyone's acting ability and common sense goes out the window. Then for some reason Thomas Hayden Church starts to look like Jeff Bridges and it just felt like a series of events were happening. Nothing in the movie seems like it was connecting to each other and the bad guys seem so hammy, I almost went out for a honey glazed ham at Kroger! It's that bad! Then I don't know what this film was supposed to be: a horror or a comedy? The last fifteen minutes of the film just seemed so out of place, and so laughable, and it was like the film stopped trying to take itself seriously... like it was a parody of itself.I don't know how this got distribution or the appearance of Dante from Clerks into this, but I guess this could be a study film for aspiring filmmakers. It's an independent film and should be looked at as such. It's not the worst film I've ever seen, but I guess it's good to laugh at with your friends. My friends got bored, and they forced me to shut it off after fifteen minutes. I should have shown them the last.

This movie ( horror) is the worst so called scary movie I have ever seen. If I could give it a 0.5 instead of a 1 I would. It is not scary, and the acting is horrible. I rented it from the video store and returned it and wanted my money back,. I am a horror movie fan, having seen hundreds of scary movies and usually don't write reviews, giving my opinion but this movie was just so bad. It could easily be in the top 10 of worst horror movies ever. It made no sense. As I watched the movie I was hoping that it would get better and a little scary but neither happened, it just got worse. The box cover and the brief summary of the movie is very deceiving, the movie is so bad on many levels. I would never, ever recommend this movie to anyone.

We rented this because it was listed as a "horror" movie. The only thing more horrifying that the movie was the fact that I lost that much time of my life watching it and will never get it back. Every 5 minutes the story line shifts and you're like WTF just happened? The actors seemed like they were in a bad porn film. The story line was awful. The bad guy (Mr. Hush, who is never really revealed as such, but you kinda guess it from watching it) was as cheesy as they come. If this had been more of a "scary movie" type of genre, I could understand it. The makeup at the end was like something you'd see at Party City at Halloween. Low budget. Bad bad bad. I laughed for like 2 hours after watching this, mostly because we were both so angry we had watched it from start to finish! I would seriously like for Redbox to refund my money - it was that bad. In the future I will definitely read the reviews before randomly renting a movie from them.