PUSH (2025) - Mark Reviews Movies

Push, Shudder

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 10, 2025

There's a rule about pregnant characters in movies, so as soon as it's revealed that our protagonist in this home-invasion thriller is pregnant, some disbelief must accompany it. Then, the title appears in big, screen-filling letters, and the word brings little but dread. This must be called Push for any other reason, right?

Look, there are plenty of ways to generate tension in this sort of story, in which a woman in a dark house on her own, without any obvious means of defense, gradually realizes someone with bad intentions is also there. Co-writers/co-directors David Charbonier and Justin Powell definitely add to the obvious challenges faced by Natalie (Alicia Sanz), the woman in the house, by making her pregnant. Surely, though, the next step of that natural process would raise so many difficulties as to turn the basic mechanics of this kind of thriller into something quite silly, right?

Let's just leave all of that alone for now, because more rhetorical questions won't get us anywhere in discussing this movie. The basic setup is nothing special, of course, apart from Natalie's current condition. She's a real estate agent, living in Michigan after moving from Spain with an American man with whom she eloped. He died in a car crash within the past nine months, naturally, and Natalie is determined to prove to her skeptical family back home and herself that she can make something of herself and support a child on her own.

That's why she drives out to the middle of nowhere for an open house, showcasing a grand, secluded mansion with plenty of space and breathtaking views. The estate has been on the market for years, and it's likely, as we soon learn, because the previous owners were murdered there. Surely, that puts the location and much more about the place, such as doors that won't fully shut or lock and phone lines that aren't reliable, into some perspective, especially since the story is set in the early 1990s.

Anyway, considerable portions of this movie are dedicated to watching Natalie walk or wander around the mansion. Initially, it comes across as Charbonier and Powell giving the audience a tour of the place, since so much of the suspense and action of a home-invasion thriller can be helped with a basic understanding of the layout of the space being invaded. It's a good excuse for the first extended sequence of Natalie's march through the long halls and visits to the mansion's assorted rooms. The other scenes of it, after the lights go out and we know—but she doesn't—that someone else is in the house, make us wonder if the filmmakers have figured out the layout of their own setting.

The invader in question, by the way, is a man known only as "the client" and played by Raúl Castillo. Initially, he's the only person to show up for the open house, and as Natalie gives him a tour (The second time she goes through almost the entirety of the house in about ten minutes of screen time), he doesn't appear too interested. It's probably not saying too much that the client already knows this place, although to even hint at why he does know the mansion so well would make what's about to become a silly thriller into a very silly one, indeed.

What can be said is that none of these tours—not the first one for our sake, not the second one the client's illumination, not the third one because Natalie's car won't start and she has to figure out how to get the lights and the phone back in working order—really matters in the big picture. The invader has a way of showing up exactly where he needs to be, of staying just out of Natalie's sight but framed perfectly in silhouette for the camera, and apparently of moving incredibly fast through the mansion, such that he can beat Natalie from the top floor to basement even when she's in an elevator.

To be fair, the movie eventually gives us an explanation for these seemingly inexplicable actions. To be honest, it might have been better if the filmmakers had just allowed us to continue believing that they're cheating with the editing and the basics logistics of this game of cat-and-mouse. The gimmick of Natalie being pregnant is one thing. The inevitable outcome of that setup is another. The final details about the client's connection to the house and his fundamental nature aren't the breaking point of the convoluted and contrived storytelling and mechanics of Push, but they do take a ridiculous execution at least two steps too far.

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