Goodnight Mommy

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.

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.

Written and directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, the original film is a triumph of understated slow burn terror, then unnerving body horror that ...

We explain the ending of Matt Sobel's 2022 remake of Goodnight Mommy, starring Naomi Watts.