Goodnight Mommy (2015)
Directed by Severin Fiala
In the heat of the summer lays a lonesome house in the countryside where nine year old twin brothers await their mother’s return. 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.
29 connections found
View:
29 films that influenced Goodnight Mommy
What critics say influenced Goodnight Mommy
A German-language Austrian production that qualifies as both art film and horror movie (like one of its inspirations, the 1960 French masterpiece "Eyes Without a Face"), the film takes place in and around a remote, modernistic home of wall-sized windows and clear acrylic egg-shaped chairs.
A little “Eyes Without A Face,” a little “Dead Ringers,” with some of the bracing provocation of “Dogtooth,” “Goodnight Mommy” is also reminiscent of the wicked games of their countryman Michael Haneke.
It begins with a remarkable straightforward plot mirroring that classic French nightmare “Eyes Without a Face.”
In her bandages, Wuest evokes memories of such films as "Eyes Without a Face" or the Pedro Almodovar riff on that film, "The Skin I Live In."
She looks like the disfigured daughter in Georges Franju’s “Eyes Without a Face” (1960), and her 9-year-old twin boys, Lukas (Lukas Schwartz) and Elias (Elias Schwartz), have the uncanny menace of the famous Diane Arbus photo of twins , alluded to with chilling effect in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” (1980).
Just look at the ingredients: creepy twins like the girls from The Shining, bandages that scream Eyes Without a Face, not to mention cockroaches, crucifixes, a whispering forest, a graveyard and an entire bunker full of skulls and bones over which the boys clamber in their matching Crocs.
A little “Eyes Without A Face,” a little “Dead Ringers,” with some of the bracing provocation of “Dogtooth,” “Goodnight Mommy” is also reminiscent of the wicked games of their countryman Michael Haneke.
Promotional materials claim that "Goodnight Mommy" is on par with "The Shining" and "Dead Ringers."
Take a hike, Jeremy Irons’ scary gynaecologist brothers in Dead Ringers.
From Margot Kidder and her formerly conjoined sibling in Brian De Palma's early Sisters through a demented Jeremy Irons times two in David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, there's a rich history of horror exploiting the potential for intuitive communication, conspiracy, loyalty, betrayal and creepiness in twins.
The Schwarzes give such symbiotic performances that it’s easy to imagine the characters being played by the same actor, like the aloof dual roles of Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers or Armie Hammer in The Social Network.
It’s not recommended for nervous types — the psychological and visceral brutality here may put you in mind of another Austrian director, the unblinking Michael Haneke , particularly his “Funny Games.”
Suffice it to say, the pic’s reality is not our own — more akin to fellow Austrian Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games,” where psychology offers limited insights into human behavior and the body-horror moments feel nerve-twistingly raw.
Written and directed by first-timers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala with a stylistic nod to the sick Funny Games by fellow Austrian Michael Haneke, the movie is a mad, malevolent adventure through the minds of its three characters and the house they inhabit.
But the boys themselves display a certain coolness that suggests they’re far from innocent: Franz and Fiala shoot them like a cross between the two girls from The Shining and the two young psychos from fellow Austrian provocateur Michael Haneke’s Funny Games.
Not since Michael Haneke unleashed a pair of psychotic young sadists on an unsuspecting family in his original 1997 Funny Games has a summer getaway in the peaceful Austrian countryside seemed less like a vacation.
Una de las fuentes de inspiración que tuvieron los directores Severin Fiala y Verónica Franz -quienes además dirigen aquí su primer largometraje- es sin dudas Funny Games, aquella fantástica cinta hecha por su compatriota Michael Haneke.
Within the context of 1956's German family feature "The Trapp Family" (a key inspiration for 1959 Broadway musical "The Sound of Music" and its 1965 film adaptation starring Julie Andrews), the sight of Ruth Leuwerik singing Johannes Brahms's "Wiegenlied: Guten Abend, gute Nacht" surrounded by her character's adorable brood of stepchildren makes for a heartwarming cinematic adieu.
Opening with a cheeky nod to the saccharine midcentury harmonies of The Sound of Music’s Von Trapp clan, horror import Goodnight Mommy is racking up raves for its slightly more menacing take on familial love and devotion in the idyllic Austrian countryside: What if the mother you loved wasn’t really your mother, but something utterly sinister posing in her skin?
Advertisement
Like Stanley Kubrick in The Shining, Franz and Fiala expertly harvest the natural claustrophobia that can crop up even in a physically expansive setting.
Promotional materials claim that "Goodnight Mommy" is on par with "The Shining" and "Dead Ringers."
But the boys themselves display a certain coolness that suggests they’re far from innocent: Franz and Fiala shoot them like a cross between the two girls from The Shining and the two young psychos from fellow Austrian provocateur Michael Haneke’s Funny Games.
Move over “forever and ever” corridor siblings in The Shining.
She looks like the disfigured daughter in Georges Franju’s “Eyes Without a Face” (1960), and her 9-year-old twin boys, Lukas (Lukas Schwartz) and Elias (Elias Schwartz), have the uncanny menace of the famous Diane Arbus photo of twins , alluded to with chilling effect in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” (1980).
Even with its echoes of "The Bad Seed" and "Misery," "Goodnight Mommy" unexpectedly hits a squirm-inducing nerve.
I say it's closer to "Lord of the Flies" and a disturbing 1976 Kris Kristofferson drama "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea."
Although you might figure out the big final twist in “Goodnight Mommy” early on—which isn’t all that difficult to do, even if you haven’t seen Robert Mulligan’s 1972 adaptation of Thomas Tryon’s “The Other” to serve as a prompt—it will probably still fascinate you, as well as creep you out.
Advertisement
From Margot Kidder and her formerly conjoined sibling in Brian De Palma's early Sisters through a demented Jeremy Irons times two in David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, there's a rich history of horror exploiting the potential for intuitive communication, conspiracy, loyalty, betrayal and creepiness in twins.
Her naked stroll through the woods culminating with a "Jacob's Ladder" type of head-shaking seems promising, but is nothing more than a dead end.
But the most genuinely nightmarish moment is a vision in a forest, involving some of that high-speed head-shaking that you inevitably associate with Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder, and that hasn’t lost its freaky power here.
She does act pretty strange, wandering off into the woods and removing her clothes and peeling off the bandages and going all Jacob’s Ladder on our asses with that freaky blurred-out head-shaking.