Push Review: What Begins as a Tense Home Invasion Thriller Soon Deflates into a Dreary Genre Exercise
Push marks the third time David Charbonier and Justin Powell continue their exploration of single-location horror thrillers following The Djinn and The Boy Behind the Door. The movie gets off to a promising start as Charbonier and Powell efficiently establish the protagonist’s backstory of Natalie (Alicia Sanz), whose life is turned upside down after a car crash kills her lover. She has since trying to cope with her loss, and now eight months pregnant, it’s a sign for her to start afresh after moving to America from Barcelona.
She keeps herself busy working as a real estate agent, and her latest job is to convince any potential buyer to purchase a long-vacant sprawling estate in a quiet, secluded location. The house remains unsellable has to do with its grim history, including the murder of the previous owners and several freak accidents. A house like this is such bad luck that it’s going to be a tough sell for Natalie to close the deal. Earlier in the movie, Charbonier and Powell take us on a tour as the camera scans the spacious interior of the house from room to room, as Natalie enters and looks around.
As day begins to turn into night and not even a single client in sight, she’s about to leave when a man (Raúl Castillo) arrives to view the house. But there’s something strange about him that gives her the creeps. After he leaves, it’s time for her to leave, but then, something else happens: Her car refuses to start. Soon, the movie plays out like a stripped-down, home invasion horror-thriller with the heavily pregnant Natalie stuck in the big house at night. Then comes the noises, and it doesn’t take long before the same man who comes to view the house earlier is back.
For a while there, Charbonier and Powell did a good job building dread-inducing tension and escalating suspenseful moments as the increasingly frightened Natalie is trying to survive the night. With her pregnant belly, it makes her situation is even more difficult than it already is, as we see her running and hiding inside the house. Castillo’s unnamed mysterious-stranger character remains enigmatic for most parts of the movie, suggesting there’s something unspeakably terrifying or supernatural about his presence. His motivation remains murky, making us, the viewers, as frustrated as Natalie. Why her? What does he want?
As much as I appreciate the minimalist approach that Charbonier and Powell choose to tell their story, the movie’s supposedly lean 89 minutes eventually succumb to a rinse-and-repeat narrative. The problem is that there is so much that Charbonier and Powell can do with their strategic camera placements alongside the use of dim lighting, shadows and darkness to convey something ominous about the house and the mysterious stranger.
Alicia Sanz tries her best to play a pregnant woman-in-peril, who is far from a damsel-in-distress but rather someone with a fair share of resourcefulness when it comes to survival and protecting her unborn baby inside the belly. Unfortunately, her commitment alone isn’t enough to overcome the movie’s large gap of its shortcomings.
As the movie progresses, it becomes predictable, and if only Charbonier and Powell manage to push (no puns intended) further beyond its all-too-familiar genre trapping, it would have done their movie a better favour. There’s a nagging sense of rigidness about the way they directed their home invasion horror-thriller. I figure they can pull off something as consistently thrilling as, say, Mike Flanagan’s Hush. Push even concludes with an unexpected post-credits scene, hinting there’s a sequel, which is frankly unnecessary to begin with.
Push is currently streaming on Shudder.
