In Goodnight Mommy, even Naomi Watts can’t make this parental nightmare seem scary
Director Matt Sobel remakes the 2014 Austrian psychological thriller, eliminating all of the thrills in the process
Film Reviews Naomi Watts
Remaking successful international productions, particularly European ones, is a tried and true Hollywood tradition. In most cases we end up with a rehash that loses whatever edge the original had; in the process of trying to make it more palatable for American audiences, something almost always gets lost—particularly with thrillers and satires. From Diabolique and Vanilla Sky in the 1990s to the recent Downhill (2020), a remake of the Swedish satire Force Majeure (2014), the list goes on. Later this year, Tom Hanks takes on the lead role in A Man Called Otto, a remake of another Swedish film, A Man Called Ove (2015). This week’s entry is Goodnight Mommy, based on the Austrian arthouse hit from 2014 of the same title, written and directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. This version is written by Kyle Warren and directed by Matt Sobel.
The setup has the marks of gothic horror. Tween twin brothers (Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti) are dropped off by their father at a country home to stay with their mother (Naomi Watts). But all is not well. Her face is covered in bandages. She avoids spending time with them. In whatever little time she spends with them, she’s belligerent, yells at them to behave, and, most egregiously, refuses to sing them a bedtime lullaby. The brothers, who are very close, begin to suspect that she’s an imposter who may have taken their mother’s place.
The story takes place mostly in that big manor house. The boys run around being mischievous as their mother hides her face and acts in ways they find disturbing. Even when she dances in front of the mirror, Watts is shot and lighted to look eerie. At first, the audience watches her from the boys’ point of view, suspecting every little gesture. But the film’s point of view shifts to present her side. For a confined thriller like this to work, tension must build steadily to the big crescendoes. Unfortunately, Warren and Sobel undercut that by throwing obvious clues about the big reveal along the way. Despite loud, ominous music and camerawork that always seems to be searching for clues, thrills are few and far between.
The original Austrian film had shock value and genuine, gruesome horror. This new Americanized version sands the edges off of the narrative every chance it gets. The three main characters are more sympathetically drawn, which hurts the suspense between them. The audience’s allegiance is supposed to see-saw between the two sides, but in this version, neither side goes to the extreme and the result is a lack of audience investment. When not inviting shrugs, the film’s histrionics elicit laughs when they should be genuinely horrific. Something’s off. A story about a mother and her children who increasingly do horrible things to each other should be frightful. Instead, it’s ludicrous. The film never comes alive.
The Crovettis also play the twins too sympathetically to be genuinely frightening. In fact, they were more alarming in their previous roles as Nicole Kidman’s sons on HBO’s Big Little Lies. Watts is committed and appropriately intense. She spends half the film hidden behind a mask relying on her voice and physicality to convey what this woman is feeling. Unfortunately, her efforts do not save the film. She’s stranded and adrift, a good performance undercut by a less-than-worthy film.
For an actor with her considerable talent and some clout in the industry, Watts continues to make puzzling choices. Another remake of a European art film after Funny Games (2007)? Another thriller where she plays a mother after The Desperate Hour (2021)? Another horror film about a woman in peril set mostly in one location after The Wolf Hour (2019)? Even among the very few who saw these films, they all quickly faded away from memory. It seems like she’s repeating the misses of her career instead of the hits.
The original film became a sensation by depicting children doing awfully gruesome stuff. It’s understandable to want to remake it, but why remove the elements that made it unique? With Goodnight Mommy, add another miss—not just to Watts’ filmography, but to the growing catalogue of U.S. remakes that are far inferior to their predecessors.
36 Comments
“It seems like she’s repeating the misses of her career instead of the hits.”Or how about another foreign-language remake of a horror film about a mother in peril after The Ring (2002)? Or another psychological thriller that shifts perspective in the middle of the narrative after Mulholland Drive (2001)? Who’s to say she’s not trying to repeat some early hits?
Foreign language? Isn’t this a remake of an Australian movie?
Austrian, not Australian
Its easy to confuse them but just rememberOne is full of monstrous creatures that will kill you and the other is the homeland of histories greatest monster
Arnold Schwarzenegger?
G’day! Here’s me mate, Adolph, and he’s fair dinkum carryin’ on like a pork chop about the Jewish blokes!
That’s no way to talk about Paul Hogan.
Oh come on, Crocodile Dundee is not history’s greatest monster.He’s up there, sure, but not at the top of the list.
Got it. Dangerous creatures like the Eurasian lynx and the Peregrine Falcon on one hand, and Yahoo Serious on the other.
Ohmyfuckinggod the huntsman spier. I’m sure Australia has great weather and all, but no thank you.
They called it “Australian” in the first mention of it in the review, but then said “Austrian” everywhere else. I got confused too at first and was like, ok, I guess they have Naomi Watts for authenticity? Looks like it’s been corrected.
Naomi Watts with a goon bag over her head?
Yeh, fair dinkum!
Well this sounds unpleasant, though an interesting gimmick anyway
Will you sing me a lullaby?
I said no, damn it. How egregious do I have to be here?
Hush little baby Don’t say a wordDaddy has had a long day and needs a drink, now shut up and go to bed.
Not bad. Though it didn’t really get egregious until the end.
Assuming that the big reveal is the same that it was in the original, I thought the original did a terrible job concealing the eventual plot twist (to the point that I wasn’t even sure it was meant to be a twist). Sounds like the remake is repeating the same mistakes.
The twist is something is horror cliche in general. I’m more surprised at horror films with twins that don’t have this “surprise.”
She fixes the cable?
Almost all modern horror movies seem to have to have a twist of some sort, so you kinda go in expecting one. With that in mind the original telegraphs the twist pretty clearly. You may not figure it all out but you clearly figure out the major beats of what is gonna happen
The twist is everyone in this movie is actually Mia Goth!
For real, if you can’t guess the “reveal” from the opening five minutes of the original, then you’ve probably been checking your phone instead of watching. It’s telegraphed so obviously and, because of that, watching the rest of the movie is a fucking slog as you wade through lengthy scenes of dull torture waiting for the film to catch up to the knowledge the audience already has.Can you tell I hated the original? Really did. Zero interest in a remake, Watts or no.
I see, I see…
People were able to forget Funny Games? Not me. That movie was fucked up.
Can we please get her agent fired. Jesus christ.
I remember thinking that the twist in the original was so obvious that the filmmakers were deliberately telegraphing in order to do a misdirect. The hints were so obvious and consistent that we were going “well clearly they won’t do that”.So the biggest shock to my friends and I was that the film delivered the exact outcome it was promising from the first act. While technically a “twist” occurred in narrative terms, the true emotional twist was that there was no twist. No shock, no surprise.
Aside from that, I thought the original film was simply “ok”: most of its spooks and chills came from the deployment of disquieting and eerie imagery rather than anything deeper. The film was not exactly special effects heavy in the ways we often associate with horror films, but it was more reliant on an overall visual effect than it was on richness of writing, or being emotionally confronting, or anything. That may in fact be why the filmmakers were satisfied with such an obvious twist: more interested in cinematography and mood than narrative (just as an aside: how many films misappropriate “gothic horror” or “creating a mood” as “lets give the colour grade an appropriate sheen of gloom,and call it a day”?). So whatever the original film’s successes were, they can be chalked up to the director having a vision, for better or for worse. If the remake can’t replicate that vision or present a consistent one of its own, there’s really not enough strength in the material to make a second attempt worthwhile imo.
Yep. I had that same thought throughout the whole movie. Is there a term for the opposite of a red herring? A green beta?
If you’re a fan of 90s UK comedy double acts I would go for a “Blue Lee”.
It made me appreciate the power of glue.
The Austrian original was incredibly predictable, especially to horror devotees, and fairly dull. I don’t really know why it got an American remake.
Yeah I wonder the same. The original barely stood on its feet via how nasty the storyline was (and because it looked good), and I don’t know how that could translate to non over the top or caricature characters.
I was indignant at first that they remade this, then I remembered that I didn’t like the original either. I remain dignant.
It seems like she’s repeating the misses of her career instead of the hits.Watts is fantastic, but I think it’s a mistake and disservice to ascribe to her the agency of A-list superstars, who for the most part have their pick of plum roles at any given time. Watts fits in a different category, that of the career artist-professional. She takes roles in films at varying points on the quality/budget spectrum, and for varying reasons (no one should begrudge an actor a paycheck, especially when they never phone it in). She adds value no matter where the film lands on this continuum. She elevates the genre, box-office grab films she chooses to appear in, and she is right at home in the smaller, more prestigious projects that auteurs cast her inShe is a talented, hardworking actor who never found a place in the A-List, and instead tends to work on films where she can elevate genre material and make more money in the process (Allegiant, Goodnight Mommy), or more auteur-driven films where the director has more control over casting (Luce, I Heart Huckabees, Birdman).
Interestingly there are examples that seem to split the difference: Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Gore Verbinski’s version of The Ring.
I loved the original. I understand its faults others have pointed out, but personally it was so adeptly uncomfortable and tense that it’s actually a running joke in our house for anything that makes us squirm. “Well, at least it’s not Goodnight Mommy.”A remake doesn’t really appeal to me, though. And for some reason Naomi Watts is under the bandages takes a lot of the thrill away immediately. I thought the original mommy was spooky in part because I could not really picture her.