Goodnight Mommy

I went into Goodnight Mommy without knowing anything about this movie except that it's around 100-minutes long and that I had 100 minutes to spare. And it ended up being a very decent and enjoyable movie.

Co-directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, Goodnight Mommy follows a very horror-esque approach to match its growingly eerie tone. The movie tells the story of a pair of twin brothers who suspect their mother who just underwent a face-altering Costmetic surgery, of being a doppleganger. With incidents that end up making the boys grow more and more suspicious, they eventually default to having no other choice but to protest their mother through growingly violent means.

The success of Goodnight Mommy is that it's written in a way that makes you sympathetic to why the boys feel and react the way they do, even though you know it's the adult who's in the right. You feel like the violence against her is justified and then you realize that from an objective point of view, there's no reason for us to be rooting for the twins.

It's enjoyable in a very engaging way, and even the twist ending (yes, it's a twist ending movie) landed effectively. The movie, from a technical standpoint, is beautiful... with the overall imagery and the isolating production design adding to the charm of the movie. There's nothing too brilliant about it, but there's nothing to compain about either. It was a decent way to spend the 100 minutes I had without any regrets.

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.

Twin boys move to a new home with their mother after she has face changing cosmetic surgery, but under her bandages is someone the children don't recognize.

If you enter in to this film after seeing the trailer, you might be disappointed or at least mislead. Whoever edited that thing make the music scarier, the action more intense, and that is just simply not what the film is about.

Instead, we get a slow burn that is on some levels a horror film, but on other levels a sad story that has far too much grounding in reality. The true scariness of the film is not the mask, as you might think from the trailer, but rather the interactions of a family that is unable to completely build trust.

Movie Gems' Review of a modern horror film ... Goodnight Mommy (aka Ich seh, Ich seh) {2014}. No spoilers!

When the trailer for Austrian horror flick "Goodnight Mommy" hit the Internet not that long ago it promptly went viral. The intriguing trailer, blessed with superb editing, got hardcore horror fans majorly "excited" ... but ... the trailer somewhat skews the real "character" of the film.

Horror fans that crave in-your-face, major scares in a movie within the genre will be very disappointed with Goodnight Mommy. It is plain and simple not that kind of horror film: in many ways it is an intensely creepy psychological-thriller with intense horror moments thrown in. The movie too is very typically European in its execution: a leisurely pace in the story telling, very controlled camera movement and the insightful framing of shots.

It is Summer and in an isolated and beautiful house in the countryside, between woods and corn fields, live nine-year-old twin brothers, Elias (Elias Schwarz) and Lukas (Lukas Schwarz). The twins are inseparable; they are very enigmatic; they keep large bugs as pets. They live with their mother (Susanne Wuest) who has recently returned home from apparent cosmetic surgery and her face is heavily bandaged. However, as far as the boys are concerned, nothing is like it was before she went away. They quickly begin to seriously doubt that this woman is actually their mother. And ... so begins their weird quest to find out the truth, a quest that involves the bizarre, the creepy and eventually the truly horrifying!

The tone, style and atmosphere of the piece blend cohesively to create feelings of unease and creepiness from the first frame to the last. Lacking any background soundtrack for most the film and any real over-the-top scares, it still has quite a few very disturbing moments especially in the last ten minutes or so.

The acting, from which is mostly an ensemble cast of three, is uniformly sound, particularly from the boys as there emotions are so frequently communicated via facial expressions and gestures rather than words.

And ... is there a twist? Of course there is! Unfortunately for me, I worked out what would eventually be revealed in the first ten minutes or so. That is not to say that I am ultra- perceptive; it's just that another early 70's film (one of my all time faves actually) used precisely the same premise so I had a "heads up" so to speak. I do admit that the film was spoiled for me because of this, but I still enjoyed it immensely! When the twist is revealed, however, it clearly shows that the film (despite its harrowing complexities) is really only about one thing ... and that one thing is very sad indeed!

Goodnight Mommy is pure Art-house horror as far as I am concerned because of the way the story is told and the cinematic techniques employed to showcase it. For example directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz have "done a Kubrick" in the final shot: it is far too long, it breaks all the cinematic rules, it makes no sense and then (in the hands of competent direction) it makes complete sense!

Goodnight Mommy is for the discerning horror movie lover who doesn't want everything dished up on a plate and who wants an intense psychological "journey" with a plausible payoff at the end.

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.