Goodnight Mommy

Ich seh, Ich seh aka Goodnight Mommy's previews were all over the internet a few weeks back. Hailed as one of the creepiest trailers this season, it had turned enough heads with its visuals and characters alike. 'Creepy' was slapped all over the trailer and the fact that it was more an art-house movie than a commercial movie, intrigued me more. Had Sundance's The Witch trailer not released earlier this week I would still have stuck to Goodnight Mommy's disturbing trailer.

From the get go you'll know that Goodnight Mommy isn't your average horror movie. Rushing through the movie like any horror movie wouldn't do justice and you wouldn't get the gist of it. Goodnight Mommy counts on being more atmospheric than in-your-face. Along with its 3 leads, its eerily disturbing locales had a life of its own and contributes a lot to the unnerving factor of the movie. A look at the initial scenes with a house in the middle of nowhere and two 9 year old twins playing would make you think that there's something very off about everything that follows.

The plot is paper thin but ain't much straightforward. From the first scene itself you'll find yourself piecing the plot together like a jigsaw puzzle. It isn't brain teasing but it all ends when 'the hunter becomes the hunted' (I wont spoil that implication). Halfway through you'll be questioning the events happening in the movie at the same time your mind will be stern on what it has already grasped in the first half. The leads were terrific, be it the Elias & Lucas Schwarz Twins or the Susanne West's The Mother. The Twins' performance were natural and as naive and, may I say, 'mischievous' as any 9 old's could get while Susanne West's almost covered face could emote more than you can ever imagine.

The weaker points here are the story and the ending. While the trailer boasts like it could be the next best thing in horror genre it isn't so. Call it brilliant marketing, the trailer beckons you to label this as a horror masterpiece. And as they say "Don't judge a book by its cover", the same applies here. Pure horror fans will be disappointed here as there are a lot less scares compared to other movies.

Towards the end or possibly much earlier than that, you'll be able to figure out where its headed and it doesn't help that the ending was equivocal. Its a common horror trope to make the ending ambiguous and while works out well for commercial horror movies, the same just didn't work out here. You will be left with questions that's not pleasing to ponder through.

Goodnight Mommy will shock you, disgust you and rattle you at times, but it wont scare you…much. This movie deserves to be watched in patience and taken in with a pinch of salt. Goodnight Mommy revels in its atmospheric dread and a certain mystique that runs almost till the end. Considering its a movie coming from debutantes, Severin Fiala & Veronika Franz, its a commendable effort indeed. This isn't a bad horror movie, its just not what its advertised to be.

I ended up liking this movie more than I thought I was going to from what I was feeling about halfway through.

It started off as a spooky/creepy horror/thriller, then not a whole lot happened... then moved into body horror. If they had shaved off about 20 minutes of what was, to me, kinda superfluous filler... I think this would have been much more successful. I get building tension and being atmospheric however there were times it dragged a bit.

It was shot beautifully and the acting was good all around. The "twist" was so obvious from about ten minutes in that I feel like it must have been purposeful (?) and almost the director/writers basically saying "that's not the point", or that's what I hope at least because a twist it was not.

This is a really cool concept to take and do a full blown horror with. This almost felt a bit like "introductory horror". Regardless I still think it was successful for what it was and I would recommend as long as you are patient with slow burns.

And one of the most depressing. Just like last year's the Babadook, it's interested in a lot of the same themes, But, unlike The Babadook, it's also so hard to watch that it stops being very exciting or entertaining. It really puts back the meaning in "horror", for better or worse. It's so not a fun time in any way shape or form, and I think at the end of the day that really does differ it to many other horror films. But it also makes it much harder to rate as a whole. It's so incredibly bleak and there's no stylization of any kind. I don't get the criticisms of the twist being obvious though... it IS obvious, but I thought that was the point. I kind of saw it more like the film giving so many clues throughout the film so we could come up with what was going on and see and perceive the film in a different level. I don't see the mother mentioning it explicitly at the end as some sort of "AHA! Got you" moment at all. I mean, anyone who's paying attention to the film would've deduced that far before the ending. Fun? No. Effective? Yes, almost devastatingly so.

What would you do, if your mother felt like new, didn't act the way she should, behaved like mother never would, like a stranger in the house, makes you feel like a small mouse, quite aggressive and quite cold, not like the one you knew of old.

Elias and Lucas struggle to come to terms with their mother when she re-joins them after a period of hospitalisation. Taking matters into their own hands they explore a variety of ways to unmask their doppelganger and expose the truth.

There's a lot to like about the escalation through this film as you wonder what you would do faced with the same position of the mother or the children. An unexpected end leaves you satisfied that every cloud does not have a silver lining.

Like others, I expected something very different based on the movie trailer. What I saw however, was much better. Goodnight mommy is a moody psychological thriller that shifts between phases of innocence, love, anger and betrayal with an ongoing feeling of dread throughout the movie. I wouldn't classify it as a "horror" film, as it feels more like a thriller. There are moments that are very tense and somewhat hard to watch. The characters are well developed and portrayed well by the actors, especially the brothers. There are a few moments that didn't fit in well with the plot and may have slowed the progression of the movie. Other that that, I enjoyed Goodnight Mother and recommend it to fans of any movie that scares, thrills, or makes you think. Not for lovers of quick-paced, cheap horror.