User reviews

A Austrian psychological drama horror that might not suit everyone just because it is a little bit on the slow side for the first half in particular and is then merely suggestively unsettling than a full on scare.

But the slow build-up kept my interest and it definitely paid off in the end.

I've read here that some people thought it was too predictable, but I must disagree because there were elements to the story that I had to go here to the message-boards to properly understand, and by then it all made sense of course.

It could be because I am currently sick so my brain isn't working properly lol but I really don't think so, and I can usually tell how a horror movie is gonna end half asleep anyway.

So yeah, recommended for patient viewers who's looking for a horror that isn't all about cheap jump scares but more of a psychological one.

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.

This is an absolute gem of a movie. It is a foreign film, so subtitles are a must if you're not Austrian. It starts out a little slow, but somehow keeps the viewer intrigued by the boys odd disposition. The film is filled with great scenery and the character development is done with a somewhat artistic taste showing what young boys get into. There are some great uses of cinematography especially during dream sequences. I would once again, reiterate that the movie is a little slow paced, but don't let that discourage you...You are in for a real treat. The film possesses one of the best endings I have seen in a long time. It a unique movie, and I absolutely loved it. I think a 7 is a fair assessment. Once again, hang in there. WATCH THIS MOVIE.

Like others, I expected something very different based on the movie trailer. What I saw however, was much better. Goodnight mommy is a moody psychological thriller that shifts between phases of innocence, love, anger and betrayal with an ongoing feeling of dread throughout the movie. I wouldn't classify it as a "horror" film, as it feels more like a thriller. There are moments that are very tense and somewhat hard to watch. The characters are well developed and portrayed well by the actors, especially the brothers. There are a few moments that didn't fit in well with the plot and may have slowed the progression of the movie. Other that that, I enjoyed Goodnight Mother and recommend it to fans of any movie that scares, thrills, or makes you think. Not for lovers of quick-paced, cheap horror.

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.

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.

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.

I ended up liking this movie more than I thought I was going to from what I was feeling about halfway through.

It started off as a spooky/creepy horror/thriller, then not a whole lot happened... then moved into body horror. If they had shaved off about 20 minutes of what was, to me, kinda superfluous filler... I think this would have been much more successful. I get building tension and being atmospheric however there were times it dragged a bit.

It was shot beautifully and the acting was good all around. The "twist" was so obvious from about ten minutes in that I feel like it must have been purposeful (?) and almost the director/writers basically saying "that's not the point", or that's what I hope at least because a twist it was not.

This is a really cool concept to take and do a full blown horror with. This almost felt a bit like "introductory horror". Regardless I still think it was successful for what it was and I would recommend as long as you are patient with slow burns.

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.

What would you do, if your mother felt like new, didn't act the way she should, behaved like mother never would, like a stranger in the house, makes you feel like a small mouse, quite aggressive and quite cold, not like the one you knew of old.

Elias and Lucas struggle to come to terms with their mother when she re-joins them after a period of hospitalisation. Taking matters into their own hands they explore a variety of ways to unmask their doppelganger and expose the truth.

There's a lot to like about the escalation through this film as you wonder what you would do faced with the same position of the mother or the children. An unexpected end leaves you satisfied that every cloud does not have a silver lining.

From thequickflickcritic.blogspot.com/

It is a conspicuously uneasy vibe established practically right from the start of the ultra-unsettling Austrian psychological thriller "Goodnight Mommy". And then from there all the way up to the haunting conclusion, Co-Directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz never take their feet off the pedal, unleashing an unrelenting and unnerving undercurrent of fear and dread.

Following what we come to learn was a horrific auto accident, a single mother also only recently separated from her husband returns to her country home and to her twin pre-adolescent sons. Severely damaged in the crash, her face is concealed in a grotesque guise of gauze and tape. She has been helplessly rendered to revealing to her children only a mummy-like mommy looking back at them with empty eyes, one who ceaselessly scolds them through pursed lips, often times as she is at once bodily abusing them. Mom's off-puttingly odd behavior leads one of the twins, Lukas, to suspect that this is not their mother at all. The other, Elias, is not so sure. At least initially, that is.

We watch, gripped with fascination, as these kids struggle mightily to uncover who, or WHAT, this curious creature is wandering about ominously in and around their house. Where in the world is she from? Or more alarmingly to consider, is she even OF this world? Is she actually an amnesiac, or is it all an act? And what of these urgent and seemingly random episodes of OCD spray bottle disinfecting of walls both inside and out? There are an abundance of plausible themes running throughout "Goodnight Mommy" from which to consider and to choose. Can a brutally battered and broken family be fixed? Can a distraught mother completely overwhelmed with pain both physical and spiritual ever fully return from the hell of a nervous breakdown? Or perhaps the ruthless reality that a post-traumatic existence is never endured alone, but is a shared suffering among all those infected in it's aftermath.

Not only are their roles exceedingly challenging emotionally, in addition these are physically punishing performances registered by all three principles in the film. The slapping, punching and eye-gouging inflicted by real-life twin brothers Lukas and Elias Schwarz along with actress Susanne Wuest upon each other never appear to be simulated. And while Wuest is certainly a stunningly beautiful woman to behold, the character she so strikingly inhabits is about as far from glamorous as can possibly be imagined.

The tables turn in terrifyingly twisted fashion mid-movie, as the persecuted become the exploiters. The hunter becomes the prey. What results is a starkly sordid demanding that love lost be replenished. And all at the will of unconscionable sadism. It is a genuinely disturbing disintegration to witness.

In the closing sequence of "Goodnight Mommy" we realize that we have returned back to the beginning of the story-the perfect picture of a mother and her children. Only we are abundantly aware that this is a final image which, while by nature eternal, has been reached at the end of a viciously cruel and merciless road paved with unspeakable grief and atrocity.

For more of my Movie Reviews categorized by Genre please visit: thequickflickcritic.blogspot.com/

It clearly seems they rushed while writing, despite of the good story the screenplay seems bore at some places, cinematography and use of light was brilliant.

'GOODNIGHT MOMMY': Four and a Half Stars (Out of Five)

Critically acclaimed Austrian horror flick; about twin nine-year-old brothers, who begin to suspect that their mother is not the woman she says she is. The film was written and directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. It stars Susanne Wuest and Elias and Lukas Schwarz (the twins make their feature acting debut, with this movie). I really enjoyed the film's atmosphere, and slow-building terror!

Elias and Lukas (the Schwartz brothers) are twin brothers, that live in an isolated countryside house; with their mother (Wuest). The boys are disturbed, and frightened, by their mom; when she returns home from cosmetic surgery, with her head almost completely wrapped in bandages. They're also bothered by her odd, and sometimes mean, behavior towards them; especially the fact that she keeps ignoring Lukas. The boys start to suspect that the woman, living in their home with them, is not their mother; and they decide to take matters into their own hands, to find out who she really is.

The film is very deliberately slow-paced, at first; but it does a really good job of setting up the story, and it's characters, in the process. There's a pretty good M. Night Shyamalan style twist, at the end; and if you're paying attention to the film, leading up to it, you should be able to pick up on several clues, that foreshadow it (pretty obviously, after you already know the twist). The movie's quite disturbing, and very terrifying, throughout; but especially at the end. The directors did a great job, directing and writing the film, and the three lead actors do outstanding work as well. It's definitely a well made horror flick, that's well worth seeing.

Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: https://youtu.be/rHh87mlE5WQ

Dark and brutal, Goodnight Mommy is a psychological horror film that haves you guessing what is happening ad what will happen until the very end. However, at points, the film feels tedious and prolonged for no good reason, but this is generally coupled with some very intense sequences which involve a strong stomach to watch. The majority of this film is good fun, but maybe too ambitious to be taken overly serious.

Goodnight Mommy is a decent film. It is not as good as it was suggested to be, nor as scary as some tend to believe, but above all it was a solid hour and a half of watching this suspense mystery horror unfold. Decent, worth the watch, but I wouldn't see it again to be honest.

I love movies that try to be original and do something new, that's why Goodnight Mommy caught my interest right off the bat. It sets a very nice tone and had me excited to see a dark/stunning story unfold. Unfortunately this movie was mostly build up with a very mediocre third act.

It's obvious that this movie was going for an artsy feel but it's like they completely bailed on that about 70% through and that really ruined the whole film imo. Plus through the whole film I kept thinking "Man I really hope they aren't going to try and do that, because if they do this will just turn into a clichéd mess" and they absolutely do what I didn't want them to.

Goodnight Mommy is a decent effort, and I'm sure it will be praised by many people who are desperate for a good horror movie, but I find it hard to give in to the hype because this really just wasn't that great of a movie.

5/10