It’s disturbing in a big way, and will stick with you for a long time after the credits roll. But if subtitles truly are enough to keep you from enjoying a really great movie, there’s no hope for you anyway.Ī great piece of psychological horror seems rare in this time of “Paranormal Activity” and its knockoffs saturating the horror market, but in “Goodnight Mommy,” we find a slice of salvation. If you can handle a small amount of reading over the course of a tight, tense 100 minutes (which you can), you really ought to expose yourself to the magic of foreign cinema.
That said, there is very little dialogue in the movie, so subtitles are minimal, and it’s a really great movie. One final note: yes, it is a foreign film and all the actors speak German. I wish I could say more than that, but anything beyond “they’re just so great” would ruin a great deal of the film. The interplay between Wuest and the Schwarz boys is impeccable. Susanne Wuest also turns in a spectacular performance as their mother (or is she?).
WHERE TO WATCH GOODNIGHT MOMMY THEATERS MOVIE
Just as good is the usage of sound: the movie contains little dialogue and is mostly scored by ambient noise, but the heavy silence is occasionally punctuated by low rumblings and spikes in volume that are as unnerving as anything I’ve seen in a movie.Ĭhild actors in horror movies are near-universally reviled, so I was very glad to see that Lukas and Elias Schwarz, as the twins, deliver excellent, wonderfully restrained performances.
There is nothing rushed during “Goodnight Mommy” (“Ich Seh Ich Seh,” or “I See I See” in the original German) every moment is long and slow and savage in its stark delivery, and I was unable to look away.ĭirectors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz use lighting masterfully throughout “Goodnight Mommy,” as evidenced by the film’s tone growing darker as the images on the screen grow lighter, a reversal of the normal strategy in horror. I’d be hard pressed to think of a movie I felt more physically uncomfortable watching.Īs the film rolled on down the tracks with near-perfect pacing, I was squirming more and more. There’s no obvious place to start talking about the movie, so I guess I’ll start with the fact that it is supremely unsettling. It is really, really good and you should seek it out as soon as possible. When she comes home, bandaged after cosmetic surgery, nothing is like before and the children start to doubt whether this woman is actually who she says she is. Here is all you need to know: the mother of twin boys comes home with a bandaged face and distant demeanor after an operation, and the boys develop doubts over if she really is their mother. In the heat of the summer lays a lonesome house in the countryside where nine year old twin brothers await their mother’s return. Please, do not look up anything about this movie before seeing it. I can’t wait to create this heart-stopping story with Amazon and the peerless Naomi Watts.I’m going to start right off the bat by saying I am going to try really hard to not spoil anything about “Goodnight Mommy,” a fantastic piece of psychological horror out of Austria. In our re-imagining of Goodnight Mommy, fear of abandonment - and the dreadful realization that those close to us may not be who they seem - create an immersive nightmare, with visceral sensations front and center. My favorite films are those that invite the audience to step inside their protagonist’s journey. Here’s what Sobel said about the project to Variety: Amazon is handling the financing and will release its version of Goodnight Mommy worldwide.
The new take on Goodnight Mommy hails from the Animal Kingdom indie label and production company Playtime, the latter of which acquired the remake writes. Take Me To The River director Matt Sobel will helm the remake, working off a script written by Kyle Warren. Naomi Watts, who’s no stranger to horror thanks to playing Rachel Keller in The Ring and The Ring Two, has been tapped to star in and executive produce Amazon Studios’ Goodnight Mommy remake.