Goodnight Mommy

Goodnight Mommy (2015)

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A woman comes home to her twin sons wrapped head to toe in surgical bandages, and the boys decide the person beneath them cannot possibly be their mother.

GOODNIGHT MOMMY (2015), originally titled Ich seh, Ich seh, takes place almost entirely inside one isolated countryside house during a brutal summer. Susanne Wuest plays the mother, recovering from cosmetic surgery, while Elias and Lukas Schwarz, real-life twins, play the sons who grow convinced she is an impostor.

Directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala shot in Austria and let the heat and the silence of the farmhouse do much of the work. There is little dialogue for long stretches, only the boys watching, testing, and waiting for the bandaged woman to slip up.

What starts as a domestic mystery turns into something far crueler, as the children's suspicion curdles into a plan. The film gives away almost nothing until it must, and what it reveals recontextualizes everything that came before it.

It is a horror film about grief and denial as much as shock, and it uses the ordinary setting of a family home to get somewhere genuinely disturbing.

Physical media

About the film

A mother should look out for her sons.

Directed by
Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz
Runtime
100 minutes
Released
January 8, 2015
US theatrical
September 11, 2015
Certification
R
Country
Austria
Starring
Elias Schwarz, Lukas Schwarz, Susanne Wuest, Hans Escher, Elfriede Schatz
More credits
Genres
Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Language
German
Origin
AT
Studios
Koch Media, Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion, Radius Productions, OFI, ORF
Written by
Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala
Produced by
Ulrich Seidl
Cinematography
Martin Gschlacht
Music
Olga Neuwirth
Also starring
Karl Purker, Georg Deliovsky, Christian Steindl, Christian Schatz, Erwin Schmalzbauer
Box office
$2,193,474

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Comments

      1. Kyle Minnehan Spoilers! Just watch the movie. I went in without really knowing what to expect and it really stuck with me. If I’d known the twist beforehand I doubt it would have affected me as much.