Goodnight Mommy

Goodnight Mommy is a 2022 psychological horror thriller by director Mark Sobel. This is a remake of the acclaimed Austrian horror film of the same name. The ...

Mother only addressed Elias because he was being seen as the outgoing one and Lucas as the shy one. Mother explains for Elias to go with her and leads him to the barn. The police woke only Elias in the neighbor’s home and at the door when they followed up. Lucas has been a hallucination for Elias throughout the entire film. When playing, she explains that Elias didn’t know the gun was loaded and accidentally killed his twin brother, Lucas. Mother tries to convince Elias to untie her and not to listen to Lucas. The film centers around a pair of twins, Elias and Lucas (played by Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti), and their relationship with their mother (played by Naomi Watts). As she explains to everyone, she just had plastic surgery, which is the reason for the mask. She also tells them the eye color is because she wears green contacts for her headshot, which is in her purse. They break into a neighbor’s house that was closed for the season, and a couple of police officers find them. They lock the door of their room, and Mother breaks in and breaks down the door with a crowbar. She doesn’t know the song she sings to the kids at bedtime.

Twin boys Elias(Cameron Crovetti) and Lucas(Nicholas Crovetti) are dropped off at their mother's house after some extended time apart. Instead of their loving ...

The symbolism of the bugs in the original is used to show the ugly things that hide in the dark. Elias and Lucas were playing with a gun in the barn, and Elias accidentally shot and killed his brother prior to the events of the movie. Although Amazon Studios’ remake is not quite the horror movie the original was, it is still a troubling psychological study in pain. The Mother we are introduced to in the opening credits is doting, but this masked Mother is absentee, lending to her otherness. Even as medicated and depressed as Mother was, it is unlikely she allowed him to play with a gun unsupervised after he killed his brother in the same way. Additionally, the horrific dream sequence where Mother’s skin is ripped back to expose her blackened skin foreshadows her burning to death in the final act. It’s very possible that Elias wasn’t shooting a gun in the yard in the beginning at all. In this new version, there is little question that Elias accidentally killed his brother and is not an evil kid. Throughout Goodnight Mommy, Lucas, and Elias doubt the bandaged woman in their house is their mother. Elias leaves the barn and his mother behind. Amazon Studios remake of 2014’s Goodnight Mommy is a well-acted, constructed movie that chooses to focus on the devastation of grief and guilt. As a result, Goodnight Mommy(2022) is not as psychologically affecting or as mean-spirited as the original but is still worth a watch.

Director Matt Sobel likened Goodnight Mommy to a sort of theatrical 're-staging' in the tradition of Shakespeare's plays.

Add to that the presence of Watts and the Corvetti twins, and you might have a good movie night recipe. "I think it's kind of more like the way in which a melody could be transcribed into a different key," Sobel continued, "and given all sorts of different emotional valances in the process of taking the kind of basic elements of the story in the original film and then reshaping them to give the story a new theme and perhaps even a different genre than the original film." Our film is much more about one boy and his perception of the world, and it's shot so as that we're seeing the world through his eyes. And I didn't yet have an idea of why a remake of this film would justify its existence." [exclusive interview](https://www.slashfilm.com/1010229/goodnight-mommy-director-matt-sobel-discusses-the-horrors-of-family-exclusive-interview/) with /Film's Danielle Ryan, Sobel explained that he had a similar line of thinking when he was first approached about the possibility of spearheading an English-language version of "Goodnight Mommy." The film, per the official synopsis, tells the story of twin brothers who "arrive at their mother's country home to discover her face covered in bandages" and begin to suspect that "the woman beneath the gauze isn't their mother at all."

"It's not like I've been trying to make remakes," the actress said of the horror adaptation. "It's just happened, but it's been a while."

“That was the reason to do that movie. “I wasn’t going to be playing just a really black and white villain,” said Watts. Both films leave much to the imagination, taking a sharp focus to the tense three-hander. “When you learn the rules and the limitations, you figure out what you can do and you double down on them and then you really get very specific,” Watts said in a recent interview with IndieWire. But after having that first initial conversation with him, I really understood that he had a new take on it.” As the mother, Watts’ face is covered in a gauze bandage for much of the film, presenting a unique challenge for the actress.

Ask someone if they've seen 2014's Goodnight Mommy, and if their immediate response is to shudder, you'll know they have. The Austrian cult horror film combines ...

This version of Goodnight Mommy is a perfectly competent, well acted movie, but it won’t linger in your mind like the original. What made the original Goodnight Mommy so effective is that the twins are at least as creepy as their mother, and it’s impossible to tell who’s more of a danger to whom. That the plot is so economical in how much information it gives out, at least initially, further increases the sense of unease. As opposed to the loving version of her before the surgery, Mommy is moody and secretive, stalking around the house and smoking (a new habit) rather than spending time with her sons. A clearer delineation between monster and innocent victim ultimately dulls the impact of the twist, not to mention makes it easier to see it coming, whether you’ve seen the original version or not. To the boys’ shock, Mommy, a celebrity of some kind, is recovering from plastic surgery that has left her head completely swathed in bandages, looking like no one as much as Claude Rains in The Invisible Man.

Goodnight Mommy debuts on Prime Video on Sept. 16, 2022. Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's Goodnight Mommy (2014) smashes through your ribcage, ...

It’s not that Sobel’s a fool for approaching his remake from a different angle — in fact, kudos — but his execution misunderstands what makes Franz and Fiala’s the sinister showstopper it is. Sobel does well breathing cold horror air in a sequence that nails its scares in an abandoned neighboring house where Elias and Lucas fortify themselves. Goodnight Mommy is told from the children’s perspective as they notice quirks in Mommy that suggest she’s been replaced by a doppelgänger — Watts is comfortably alien in her skin, stoking the children’s imagination. Goodnight Mommy depends on preconceptions that favor childhood sympathies and begrudge elder mistakes as suspense hangs in limbo. In doing so, Goodnight Mommy becomes another hum-drum American remake that’s never willing to sensationalize or instigate like foreign horror. Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s Goodnight Mommy (2014) smashes through your ribcage, tears out your heart, and watches with glee as you writhe — a decade-defining bounty of scorching bleakness.

Goodnight Mommy star Naomi Watts, as well as young actors Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti and the film's writer and director, discuss how the mother's ...

“So ways I was able to obscure what’s actually going on and hopefully make the audience lean in because they want to know, I always found to be useful tools and the bandages are just one of those.” It made it possible to create a lot of mystery both for the boys and for the audience.” “You could rely on the opaqueness of her expression to create a sense of mystery in the boys and in the audience,” Warren tells THR. Sometimes we would break the tension by making sure that we’re telling jokes or we’re playing a game, so they don’t almost sort of short circuit with the possibility of dark thoughts taking hold.” Some scenes were a lot more difficult than others because of that,” she says. “You had to really find specific things to play off her emotions because you couldn’t see your whole face. As a parent now, I always worry about my children getting cut or living with dark thoughts and so it’s always important to talk as much as one can with them. I feel it was very important because you couldn’t see her face or facial expressions, so you were just paying attention to her eyes,” Cameron says. I was just as worried about these kids because I don’t know them and I’m doing strange things and sometimes yelling and sometimes getting physical,” Watts tells THR. For Watts, wearing the bandages while acting opposite her younger co-stars made her more careful about how they interacted on set. But when they arrive, they find her face wrapped in bandages, the result of recent cosmetic surgery. “So I just had to keep checking in, not just with them, but their mother.”

Director Matt Sobel remakes the 2014 Austrian psychological thriller, eliminating all of the thrills in the process.

Another horror film about a woman in peril set mostly in one location after The Wolf Hour (2019)? The audience’s allegiance is supposed to see-saw between the two sides, but in this version, neither side goes to the extreme and the result is a lack of audience investment. Another thriller where she plays a mother after The Desperate Hour (2021)? From Diabolique and Vanilla Sky in the 1990s to the recent Downhill (2020), a remake of the Swedish satire Force Majeure (2014), the list goes on. Another remake of a European art film after Funny Games (2007)? She spends half the film hidden behind a mask relying on her voice and physicality to convey what this woman is feeling. She’s stranded and adrift, a good performance undercut by a less-than-worthy film. The original Austrian film had shock value and genuine, gruesome horror. The film never comes alive. At first, the audience watches her from the boys’ point of view, suspecting every little gesture. Later this year, Tom Hanks takes on the lead role in A Man Called Otto, a remake of another Swedish film, A Man Called Ove (2015). In whatever little time she spends with them, she’s belligerent, yells at them to behave, and, most egregiously, refuses to sing them a bedtime lullaby.

An Amazon redo of 2014's atmospheric Austrian chiller struggles to bring anything new to the table.

The tired process of remaking foreign-language horror films, seemingly only for viewers unwilling to watch a film with subtitles, had largely, mercifully subsided in recent years and Goodnight Mommy is a reminder of why. The original was stylishly made and effectively creepy but it built up to a reveal that felt disappointingly cheap, like finding out a sharp designer suit was actually a knock-off all along. Without the fine, frightening direction of aunt-nephew duo Veronika Fran and Severin Fiala, we’re left with very little, a slick but soulless little movie that should appease neither fans of the original nor newcomers.

Matt Sobel's movie is a far cry from the Austrian film that inspired it, but it hits enough creepy horror beats to get the job done.

The creepy movie largely suffers when it tries to shift gears and deliver actual terror, and some of its most “brutal” scenes serve as reminders of how it pales in comparison to the work that inspired it. This only makes things worse, until the situation reaches a boiling point when they tie their mother to her bed and refuse to let her go until they get the truth. They are eventually picked up by the police, who don’t believe their stories of abuse and return them to their mother’s house. The boys are immediately struck by how much she has changed, beginning to speculate about whether the woman behind the bandages is actually their mother. Oh, and there’s the fact that their mom had major cosmetic surgery without telling them, and now has to keep her face covered in bandages. Matt Sobel’s reimagining of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s 2014 Austrian film of the same name never tries to reinvent the wheel, but while it lacks the potency of the original film, it manages to keep horror lovers entertained without ever embarrassing itself.

How you feel about the elevated horror label will likely affect whether you enjoy Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's feature debut, and I've certainly heard ...

While it is somewhat nice that the film isn't a total beat-for-beat remake, the changes that were made to the story ultimately come too late, leaving audiences scratching their heads rather than be enraptured with the story. Even the original's third-act twist is implemented into this remake, and it makes no effort to hide it throughout. Some of the changes were pretty insignificant and don't add much change to the story, such as the Red Cross volunteers from the original now being rural police officers. However, both of the twins in this movie act like they are nine years old despite clearly being older than that. The original film's Elias and Lukas were around nine years old, a few years younger than the ages of the real-life twins. Even if you are unfamiliar with the original story, the "Goodnight Mommy" remake sticks far too close to the original.

The Amazon Prime Video film, "Goodnight Mommy," directed by Matt Sobel, is a remake of the 2014 Austrian film of the same name. Starring Naomi Watts, the.

In the meantime, his mother asked him to accompany her to the barn. Even though he cried for help, in the end, he could not accept the truth and pushed his mother away. He knew that by confronting the truth he would lose the comfort of imagination, and he did not wish for that to happen. Lukas stood behind him, asking him to trust him and not to believe what the mother said. She wanted to be a loving mother, but at the same time, she wanted to be in control. He lied to them about his mother, stating that she was not at home. She was not the mother he knew. Lukas and Elias left their home with their mother tied to the bed and her mouth sealed with tape. She discussed with the police the issues she had with her son, but we do not get to hear that conversation. She was not even human; she was a supernatural being who wanted to consume him. The belief that the woman they were living with was not their mother grew stronger as days passed. From the onset, Elias felt that their mother was behaving differently.

Amazon Video's reboot of the Austrian shocker Goodnight Mommy ignores or reverses everything that made the original one of the all-time best horror movies.

Not even to mention the nearly bloodless ending, which is both poorly filmed and takes as a given that the For fans of the original, the loss of everything that made the original version frightening is devastating. Not only does the remake lack the gumption to even approach the original film in terms of terror and on-screen pain, it doesn’t really work as a film in its own right. The original version of these twins kept cockroaches as pets, made strange masks, and tingled viewers’ spines by communicating wordlessly. The remake’s shortcomings aren’t due to her lack of craft or effort — the issues lie solely in the writing and directing. Twins are a major horror trope, capable of igniting the uncanny and bringing about uneasy feelings in film without too much explanation. Though the film (like the remake) is easily spoiled, it’s sufficient to say that its kids are creepy enough and the ending dark enough to shake even jaded horror aficionados. The boys are both alarmed at first, but they loosen up a little as they can see she’s making an effort to win them over, and they settle into their new family structure. It maintains the original’s mood and tension, but [The Batman](https://www.polygon.com/reviews/22951429/the-batman-movie-review-2022) and [Cloverfield](https://www.polygon.com/2018/2/8/16991384/cloverfield-paradox-explained-series-10-lane-j-j-abrams) director Matt Reeves also didn’t set out to pay homage to Let the Right One In. Though his film isn’t as unwaveringly brilliant as the imported version of the story, Let Me In is a worthy horror film unto itself. The Austrian cinematic landscape isn’t completely free from the dark side of film, but it’s more firmly known for comedy and historic dramas. The debut narrative feature from writer-directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz is a brazen, unflinching horror film coming from a country not known for its horror industry.