Writer(s): Fiala and Franz
Starring: Susanne Wuest and Elias & Lukas Schwarz
For a little while there, the Goodnight Mommy trailer went viral, partly due to MTV and a couple other online publications, declaring it one of the scariest movie trailers of all time, a title it held for a solid three or so days, before it was inexplicably replaced by the generic trailer for The Witch. Anyway, even though I typically go out of my way to avoid anything viral, I checked it out…and for the first time in recorded history, MTV wasn’t a completely worthless waste of time. It was perfectly creepy, with a constant undercurrent of dread, and by the time it ended, I knew I had to see it.
But the problem with movie trailers, and to an even greater
extent, advertising in general, is that it doesn’t have to be entirely truthful;
instead, it’s all about editing them in such a way that it will entice people
into paying money to see it, preferably in the theater, where they can charge
$12 a ticket, and then further gorge you on popcorn and soda. In this case, I thought I was going into a
horror movie whose main focus was to terrify the viewer, but instead I got a
movie that has about three points to make, makes them well within an hour, and
then repeats those points over and over until they’ve stretched their movie to
99 minutes long.
You can at least get half of the plot from the trailer: Two kids come home to see their mother, who
has just returned from cosmetic surgery.
But they quickly notice that her personality is different; she seems to
have a shorter fuse, and punishes them for the smallest of things. It doesn’t take long for them to make the
decision to fight back, and very soon their mother is tied up to the bed,
completely defenseless against their retaliatory attacks, leading me to another
question: How could two nine-year-old kids, without any forethought or
planning, tie up a grown woman so well that she cannot escape? Anyway, it is about this time is when we’re
hit with uncertainty—is she really a different person, or are the children just
using that as an excuse to punish their mother for another reason?
The movie never once achieved anything close to the dread
and atmosphere that the adverts displayed, which isn’t much of a shocker in and
of itself. After all, it’s much easier
to sustain dread and tension over the span of two minutes, as opposed to a 99
minute movie. But the biggest revelation
for me is that it didn’t even seem interested in trying to be scary. Yes, it’s true that it has some eeriness to
it, which is helped along by the now-standard ambient score, but it’s more in a
mysterious kind of way, like Picnic at Hanging Rock. By the film’s third act, however, all forms
of scares are gone, and it essentially becomes just your typical modern horror
film, though I won’t reveal how, because that would run the risk of giving too
much away.
I also wasn't at all a fan of the directing style,
which I found to be completely grating.
The two twins are given very little to do but stare blankly into the
camera for long stretches of time before uttering one or two lines in similarly
blank, monotone voices. This goes on for
the full duration of the movie. I would really
love to see someone put together a supercut of all the times this happens,
because it ends up feeling like it adds a good ten minutes to its length,
while simultaneously adding nothing of value to the story.
Goodnight Mommy also trips up in a later scene involving
two characters from the Red Cross, who pop up out of nowhere, invite themselves
in, and then hang around for an uncomfortably long amount of time. This scene is meant to add intensity, but in
this context, it comes way out of left field, and feels incredibly forced, like
the writers had a “How to Write a Horror Movie” checklist and included it only
so they could check the “How to Build Tension” part off. It might not be as bad as the “pancakes”
scene from Cabin Fever (perhaps the worst out-of-the-blue scene included in
any movie), but it’s still a completely baffling, infuriating sequence that
should have ended up on the cutting room floor.
Speaking of which, the final revelation also feels rather tired; a few
years back, it might have had the emotional impact the filmmakers were going
for, but nowadays, it feels almost standard. But at least they got to check off
“Go for Emotional Ending” on that same checklist.
Its sole saving grace is the performance by Susanne Wuest (as
the mother) who, contrary to how quiet she seems in the trailer, actually has a
lot of emoting to do, especially as the film wears on. Her acting is spot on, and while it doesn’t
quite reach the levels of near-perfection of Essie Davis’ in The Babadook,
it’s still way more even and consistent than the material deserves. I’ll be interested to see her career
trajectory from here, because this is the kind of performance that will make
studios stand up and take note; if she can do this consistently, then she
deserves to be a star.
RECAP: Susanne Wuest’s excellent performance (as the mother)
is hands-down the best thing about this rather tired shocker, which doesn’t
nearly live up to the high standards promised by its terrifying trailer. The twists, which could have packed the emotional
resonance the filmmakers were going for a few years ago, are quickly becoming
standard twists, while the kids are given very little to do besides stare
blankly at the camera for large stretches, while uttering monotone lines. This is a terrible, and terribly dull,
picture that is destined to disappoint.
RATING: 3/10
TRAILER
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