Directed By: Matt Sobel
Starring: Naomi Watts, Nicholas Crovetti, Cameron Crovetti
Plot Summary: When twin brothers (Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti) arrive at their mother’s (Naomi Watts) country home to discover her face covered in bandages—the result, she explains, of recent cosmetic surgery—they immediately sense that something doesn’t add up. She sets strange new house rules, smokes in her bathroom, and secretly rips up a drawing they gave her—things their loving mother would never do. As her behavior grows increasingly bizarre and erratic, a horrifying thought takes root in the boys’ minds: The sinking suspicion that the woman beneath the gauze, who’s making their food and sleeping in the next room, isn’t their mother at all.
2014’s Goodnight Mommy is a German horror thriller that floored me upon my first watch. While the film isn’t without its flaws, it’s an overall creepy and highly engaging film. Clearly, the film draws a lot of inspiration from the darkly sardonic French film Les yeux sans visage, or the English title, Eyes Without a Face. Released that same year were such bangers as The Babadook, Creep, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and As Above So Below. Keeping this in mind, it’s fair to say that the original Goodnight Mommy got a bit lost in the shuffle.
Since then, the movie has remained a bit obscure, outside of hardcore fans such as myself. So, imagine my shock when I heard that Amazon of all places had produced a remake starring Naomi Watts. My mind raced with questions, such as: would it retain the original film’s beautiful yet transgressive imagery? Would star Naomi Watts be able to do justice to the titular Mother Susanne Wuest’s complex and utterly raw performance? Not to mention, could they pull off the insane third act, deliciously brilliant twist, and unflinching violence? The answer is no, no to all of that.
I want to state something up front – I am not an automatic hater of remakes. Sure, most aren’t good, but some are on par if not better than their original counterparts. Though, most world cinema that gets remade and repackaged for a mass US audience is normally dismal. Sadly, this is more or less what I had feared. While some of the clunkier elements of the 2014 film are streamlined here, the new iteration of Goodnight Mommy is a toothless and incredibly watered-down version. Matt Sobel removes the beautiful imagery, psychological tension and build-up, and the bonkers final act that has firmly been planted in my gray matter for all time. This feels like it goes out of its way to sand down the edge of Severin Fiala’s and Veronika Franz’s blistering work of subversive and harrowing art.
What we are left with is a ‘10’s era psychological popcorn film that is bland and frankly forgettable. It’s a shame because there are certainly elements of this movie that I do think work. As stated above, the writer did manage to fix a few clunky story threads from the original. This also isn’t without a few nice spooky moments with some style. Sobel is clearly a horror fan, and there are some clever visual references to The Shining (a nice inverse of demented dad Jack Torrance) and a nice subtle nod to bandaged Julia in Hellbound: Hellraiser II for good measure. Watts really does sell this movie despite the wooden dialogue she is made to say. The child actors Nicholas Crovetti and Cameron Crovetti are solid as well.
But, at the end of the day, Kyle Warren’s screenplay (his sole feature film project) ditches all the elements that made the German Goodnight Mommy so special, and stitched together a generic copy and paste horror film. If I’m being generous, Goodnight Mommy is not awful. However, it falls in that spot of not over-the-top enough to be so bad it’s enjoyable, nor does it thrive as a richly developed psychological thriller. It’s just kind of there. Put this one to bed and just watch the original if you like surreal and dark fever dreams.
Goodnight Mommy is currently available to stream globally on Prime Video.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lKm2Vct3x4]
Put this one to bed and just watch the original if you like surreal and dark fever dreams.
Big film nerd and TCM Obsessed. Author of The Ultimate Guide to Strange Cinema from Schiffer Publishing. Resume includes: AMC’s The Bite, Scream Magazine etc. Love all kinds of movies and television and have interviewed a wide range of actors, writers, producers and directors. I currently am a regular co-host on the podcast The Humanoids from the Deep Dive and have a second book in the works from Bear Manor.
