"Goodnight Mommy (2022)" - Prime Video Film Review
Goodnight Mommy (2022) is a remake of an Austrian film of the same name that quickly grew popular in the world of horror aficionados. The original film is viscerally unpleasant to watch, but technically magnificent in the dread it manages to develop for the audience. The same basic plot is kept in this updated version. Lukas (Nicholas Crovetti) and Elias (Cameron Crovetti) are young twins who are brought to stay with their mother (Naomi Watts). Unbeknownst to the twins, she is recovering from facial surgery. Mother, the only name the film gives her, wears a cloth that covers her entire face. Lukas and Elias are convinced that the person under the bandage is not their mother and set about trying to expose this woman.
Like all horror movies, there’s a massive, upending twist awaiting viewers toward the end of the film. Those familiar with the source material will wait with bated breath to see if that shoe drops again. Leading up to the reveal, it certainly seems as if Goodnight Mommy (2022) is following in the same footsteps. Granted, the twist in the original film is heavily hinted at within the first ten minutes and an active viewer could figure out where things were going.
As strange as it is to say, without the disturbing finale of the original, Goodnight Mommy (2022) is a confusing remake. The terror that’s revealed in the Austrian version of the film is extremely exaggerated, but it gives the audience an idea of how obsessive familial ties can be and how dangerous ideas can take hold to shocking conclusions. Goodnight Mommy (2022)’s finale does not deliver that same shock. Instead, it whimpers to a close. It’s a watered-down version of a much gnarlier film that is seemingly made for teenage sleepovers where no one wants to be that scared.
If the original Goodnight Mommy was a whisper spread by word of mouth among those “in the know,” this remake is like that time Apple put U2’s album on everyone’s iPhones without asking. Goodnight Mommy (2022) is more accessible to a wider audience given its distribution on Amazon Prime’s streaming service, Watts’ enduring notoriety, and the lack of subtitles for English speakers. The fact that a film is more accessible doesn’t mean it’s the superior version of the story. It’s hard to feel like Goodnight Mommy (2022) elevates its source material in a way to warrant Americanizing it. “Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles,” Bong Joon-ho famously said when he accepted the award for best foreign-language film for Parasite at the 2020 Golden Globes, “you will be introduced to so many more amazing films."
To Goodnight Mommy (2022)’s credit, it is not a shot-by-shot remake. Some visuals from the original remain, but they don’t pack the same punch. The Crovetti twins simply don’t loom over a tied-up Watts in the same way Elias and Lukas Schwarz did to Susanne Wuest. While the twist in the remake did differ slightly from the original, it wasn’t enough for Goodnight Mommy (2022) to stand more solidly on its own.
Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Letterboxd, & YouTube. Check out Movies with My Dad, a new podcast recorded on the car ride home from the movies.