Hush

Rising star Gwyneth Paltrow's head must have still been in that box from Seven when she agreed to star in this ludicrous thriller. Jessica Lange camps it up Dunaway-style as matriarch Martha Baring. Martha is a baaad mother. How bad? Let's just say that Norman Bates would feel right at home on her Kentucky horse farm. Paltrow co-stars as Helen, who is engaged to Baring's son (vacuous hunk Jonathan somebody from That Thing You Do), not to mention pregnant by him. This does not sit well with the creepily obsessive Martha (the way she hoses off her bare-chested son is one of many unsubtle red flags to the audience), whose efforts to manipulate the couple become increasingly hysterical and homicidal. Paltrow escapes unblemished (incredible after what she goes through), but for Lange, who perhaps was hoping for the kind of career boost that greeted Glenn Close's villainous turn in Fatal Attraction, this is a nadir. Not recommended. (K. Lee Benson)