Review // Goodnight Mommy

Twin boys rush through rows of ripe corn in the opening shots of Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s Goodnight Mommy. Left alone at their house in the Austrian countryside, the two brothers Elias and Lukas have literally become children of the corn. However their days of carefree roaming come to an abrupt end when mother returns to the house from the hospital. Her face swathed in bandages and her eyes bruised, she’s a spooky sight, and we don’t blame the boys for being hesitant with her. However their suspicions about their mother grow more tangible as she begins behaving erratically, telling them to keep the blinds closed, verbally and physically abusing them, and wandering into the forests naked.

“What has happened to Mom?” is the question the inseparable twins repeat to each other, their suspicion growing that perhaps the thing beneath the bandages isn’t their mother at all. Lukas and Elias Schwarz are delightfully unsettling as the brothers who begin the film like Tom and Huckleberry, splashing around in the old swimming hole and exploring caves in the forest, but slowly morph into a more volatile pair who whisper unheard instructions to each other and even share dreams. Susanne Wuest provides their counterpoint as Mommy, a former Austrian television star who arrives at the house like a living experiment of Dr. Frankenstein.

It’s hard to talk about the movie without giving too much away, but then again I’m not even sure what the film itself gives away. There are just as many red herrings as there are clues in the slow drip of information the story provides, and the whole thing left me with a desire to go back and catalogue it precisely. Unfortunately it’s not really something you want to watch for a second time. For the first half of the film we’re engrossed by the atmosphere and imagery of this lone house in the country, but by the second half – as the film veers more into the overt and gruesome – we know what’s going on, and we’re just watching through our fingers to make sure.

Though let down by it’s latter half, Goodnight Mommy is still a must-watch for horror aficionados, especially those happy to forgo the traditional jump scares for a more atmosphere feel. The film’s opening thirty minutes are a work of eerie beauty that simultaneously captures a spirit of childhood wonderment and that deep, unsettling terror of the unknown. Though the themes that eventually bubble to the surface (the nature of grief, the effects of trauma at a young age) have been captured more effectively in other recent horror efforts (Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook comes to mind a number of times) there is still plenty of meat on the bone.

Reviewed by Evan Arppe.