Goodnight Mommy (2014)

• Year: 2014
• Released: 11 Sep 2015
• Country: Austria
• Adwords: 23 wins & 36 nominations
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3086442/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/goodnight_mommy
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/goodnight-mommy
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: German
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
• Runtime: 99 min
• Writer: Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala
• Director: Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz
• Cast: Lukas Schwarz, Elias Schwarz, Susanne Wuest
• Keywords: woman director, torture, divorce, cat, priest,

	6.7/10
	81/100
	85% – Critics
	65% – Audience

Goodnight Mommy Storyline

In an isolated comfortable house by the lake, twins Elias and Lukas see their mother with her face covered in bandages after surgery and ignoring Lukas. She only talks to Elias and orders new rules for her house, asking for silence, to keep the curtains closed during the day, and to play only outside the house since she needs to rest. She is tough with Elias and the twins suspect that the woman might not be their mother. When they compare old photos with her face and find that their house is for sale on the Internet, they conclude that she is not their mother. Then they tie her arms and legs to the bed and torture her into telling them where their mother is. What is this woman’s secret?

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Goodnight Mommy Movie Reviews

Anxious and emotional, Goodnight Mommy resonates to your core fears and terrors, amazing

The original title for the Austrian film Goodnight Mommy is Ich seh Ich seh, which translates roughly to “I see, I see.” This phrase is a reference to a German/Austrian version of “I spy with my little eye,” which proceeds instead as “Ich seh, Ich seh, was du nicht siehst” – “I see, I see, what you don’t see.” There is an abundance of visually stunning darkness and violence in this truly disturbing film. So what, then, are we meant to see that we do not immediately see?

In the opening to the Austrian film Goodnight Mommy, two ten-year- old twins, Elias and Lukas (portrayed wonderfully by Elias and Lukas Schwarz), idle away their boyhood summer at a large countryside house. Curiously unsupervised for the first part of the film, they boys seem to exist in a single, golden, never-ending day of play, running through fields, swimming in the lake, and exploring caves. However, the light of the summer quickly becomes more sinister when their mother (the equally superb Susanne Wuest) returns home from an unexplained cosmetic facial surgery. To Elias and Lukas, the heavily bandaged woman now in their home is severe and menacing, and the boys soon begin to suspect that she is not their dear mother at all.

What unfolds throughout the film is seemingly a monster movie, the tale of a beast that descends from the hills to terrorize a town (population: 2). The mother stalks through the house with booming steps, almost machine-like in resonance and pace, trailed by a plume of ashen robes. She sets strict rules for the silence and sterility of the house, for which the boys are punished harshly when they refuse to comply. Stranger yet, the woman seems to prohibitively favor one of her sons, citing an unstated prior insult as justification.

The directors of Goodnight Mommy, Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, are masterful at creating tension and mystery. Who is this woman? It seems impossible that this woman is their mother, or anyone’s mother for that matter. At one point, after making too much noise, the boys are locked in their rooms, starved and forced to urinate into cans. They begin to have visions of their mother undergoing demonic transformations. They realize they must fight back.

Many of the mother’s actions are objectively monstrous and inconsistent with her personality in the past. The film becomes more compelling, however, after the halfway point, when we begin to realize that we are, in fact, being told this story through the eyes of children. Lukas and Elias have legitimate fears and analyses, but their minds are walled by their own naiveté. We see hints of the mother as a damaged and strained person who is struggling to heal emotionally as well as physically. Through small clues—snippets of conversations, flashes of computer screens–it is revealed that some significant change happened to this family prior to and beneath the surface of the film. Trauma does not discriminate between the young and the old, and ultimately, after the film’s graphically violent and shocking turn in the final act, we are left devastated for all members of the family alike.

As watchers of horror movies, we are trained to be vigilant, always on edge and scanning for the monster around the corner. This is more challenging in Goodnight Mommy, in which allegiances shift throughout. Where did I actually see the monster? For many years, horror films have focused on fear of children as a central theme, with movies such as The Ring, Children of the Corn, and The Exorcist all utilizing childhood as a conduit of terror. While not a direct subversion of this theme, Goodnight Mommy sets its goals higher, exploring the desolation and fear that can occur when humans at vastly different stages in their development attempt to reconcile themselves with transformative pain. Terror is never just about a monster; terror is found within.

There is a moment in Goodnight Mommy when the anxious heat of summer finally breaks, and the sky opens to a flurry of hail. The boys rush out to the back yard in cathartic glee to jump around in the chunks of ice. Inside, their mother stares coldly, her hollow eyes buried in bandages, her face obscured by blinds, her entire body sealed like a dissected specimen behind a pane of glass. In that moment, the boys and their mother are more like pillars demarcating negative space than a family. The void between them is terrifying, but nonetheless invisible. There is nothing there to see.

Review written by contributing writer, please check out our website for full reviews of all the recent releases.

Chilling

Goodnight Mommy is a great example of how more can be done with far, far less than many movies attempt. Also known by its original title of Ich seh ich seh (German for I See I See), it was written and directed by Austrian filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala in both of their full-length feature film debuts. It perfectly demonstrates how the familiar can be much more terrifying than any outside monster could dream.

It opens with twins Elias and Lukas (played by Elias and Lukas Schwarz) playing outside while they await their mother’s return from cosmetic facial surgery. Things are immediately awry as mom (played by Susanne Wuest) now acts very strangely — ordering them to keep the blinds closed and noise to a minimum to aid in her recovery, but also pointedly ignoring Lukas and lashing out at Elias when he misbehaves. The boys soon start to suspect that the woman under the bandages isn’t their real mother…

** SPOILERS! **

They did an amazing job at even making some of the most benign scenes — the boys playing before their mother’s return, for example — have this air of forlornness to them. Even before she arrives at home you feel this strong sense of loneliness from them, despite the fact that they are constantly together.

Every interaction between mother and sons manages to be either awkward, stiff, and fumbling or downright hostile — or sometimes both. If a scene isn’t tough to watch because of actual disturbing images (which are surprisingly few and far between), it’s tough because you’re witnessing such a sterile, seemingly unfamiliar interaction between family. She treats them like unwanted strangers most of the time, despite their obvious pleas for affection.

As I mentioned, the truly disturbing images and scenes are few and far between — this movie relies more heavily on an implied, psychological type of horror — but the ones that do exist are intense. Even somewhat subtle ones, like when one of the boys tries to peek in on the mother while she’s in the bathroom with her bandages off and she hears the creak of the door and we see her heavily bloodshot eye catch a glimpse of him in a magnifying mirror. Truly chilling. Or the mom standing in front of the full- length mirror with a sheer nightgown on — an image that, on its face, shouldn’t be so disturbing but in the full context of the movie I thought it was brilliant. In another scene, they put a cockroach from their collection onto her face as she sleeps and watch it crawl into her mouth. In one, we see the mother from above, tied to the bed, having recently peed herself, and she’s almost reminiscent of the crucifixion. In another, we only hear a torture scene from the boys’ room, the shot centered around a walkie-talkie on the shelf.

There’s some pretty heavy implications throughout of the mother being severely depressed. Some of the signs are written off as necessary parts of her recovery process, but I definitely got the impression that she was deeply sad — the shades are all drawn, absolute quiet is demanded, no visitors, ordering a year’s worth of frozen pizzas, unexpected snaps of rage, and one scene in particular where she fakes being asleep when one of the twins tried to get her after the doorbell rang, or when she rushes to get her bandages back on upon the twins returning home after playing outside. We, of course, find out why later on, but I thought it was an interesting view on how isolating and confusing depression can be, both for the person suffering from it and those who are close to them.

There were so many great shots where they highlighted the twins’ similarities while also making sure not to make them perfectly symmetrical — them laying with the dead cat, sitting against the tub bleeding from their noses, one of them kneeling at the cross while the other stands.

The tension is high throughout the whole film, but it really ramps up when they start seriously suspecting that their mother is not who she claims to be. Watching their paranoia grow was alarming as they start to train themselves to withstand beatings, carving weapons, and keeping guard one at a time. When they get to the point of actually tying her up and interrogating her, it’s amazing how much you really don’t know WHO you side with. There is evidence mounting on both sides — both of them being overly paranoid and of her actually being a fake somehow — that you just flip flop back and forth the entire time. It makes some of the torture scenes very confusing because, while hard to watch no matter what, there is part of you that feels for these boys — you can feel their loneliness, their betrayal, their deep sadness. And, ultimately, the twins are brilliantly written as they vacillate so quickly between cruelty and sympathy, sometimes even in the same action — they burn her face, but then put antiseptic on it, right before taping her mouth. They superglue her mouth shut (one of the most WTF moments of the whole film), but then cut it open to feed her, all the while begging her to please prove that she’s their mom. It’s desperate in a very raw way.

The ending, beginning with her escaping, is the perfect sort of crescendo of chaos. And the reveal — that Lukas died along with their father in an accident — was SHOCKING, truly. One of those truly great moments in a film where you say “ohhhhHHHH” and so many previous moments snap into place and make sense. It’s an insane talent to be able to put a movie together with that much seamless complexity.

Overall, just awesome. Truly chilling, amazing mood all around, and incredible acting from everyone involved.

Good Build Up To An Underwhelming Finale

I love movies that try to be original and do something new, that’s why Goodnight Mommy caught my interest right off the bat. It sets a very nice tone and had me excited to see a dark/stunning story unfold. Unfortunately this movie was mostly build up with a very mediocre third act.

It’s obvious that this movie was going for an artsy feel but it’s like they completely bailed on that about 70% through and that really ruined the whole film imo. Plus through the whole film I kept thinking “Man I really hope they aren’t going to try and do that, because if they do this will just turn into a clichéd mess” and they absolutely do what I didn’t want them to.

Goodnight Mommy is a decent effort, and I’m sure it will be praised by many people who are desperate for a good horror movie, but I find it hard to give in to the hype because this really just wasn’t that great of a movie.

5/10