Film Road to Halloween: Goodnight Mommy (2014)

The road to Halloween is paved with good films. Wherein we countdown to the spirited season with a hundred doses of horror. 81 days to go.

With a title like Goodnight Mommy and a tagline that states the following ‘A mother should look out for her sons’, this hardly sounds like a horror film upon first glance. However, Goodnight Mommy is a true horror film that taps into our deepest and most primal fears. The horror is deeply unsettling and unfolds slowly (sometimes unbearably slow), but that’s what makes this film so effective.

Goodnight Mommy falls into the same category of horror films that center around a small family unit collapsing from within as the evil that threatens them is homegrown. Films like The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby or The Exorcist, all deal with an evil force that has invaded the family. And personally speaking, it’s these types of films which are far more horrifying to watch. We can lock our doors, and board up our windows in order to slow down a threat from outside. But how do you stop the evil that cooks your dinner and tucks you into bed at night?

The film follows a woman (Susanne Wuest) who returns home from having facial surgery to her young twin sons Elias and Lukas (Lukas and Elias Schwarz). Their father is no longer around and the family lives in a house in the middle of the vast countryside, it is just the three of them. There’s something off about their mother, she’s more distant, she’s forgetful, and she’s sleeping a lot. The fact that her face is covered in bandages only makes matters worse. The twins are convinced that the woman who has returned is not their mother, and therefore they decide to take matters into their own hands.

“The film subverts the traditional expectations of most horror films.”

The reason that the film works so well is down to the three central performances. The twins manage to hide so much of their inner thoughts by communicating via facial expressions and gestures rather than words. Susanne Wuest is extraordinary as a mother trying to tackle the responsibilities that incur with motherhood, and as the film develops the viewer begins to sympathize with her. Like The Babadook, Goodnight Mommy explores the darker side to motherhood, and our feelings towards the three central characters change dramatically as the twist is revealed to us.

A key strength of the film is its production design, by having the film’s action take place mostly inside a very modern home, the film subverts the traditional expectations of most horror films.  Although the house is stylish and modern, it’s lack of any personality, warmth and comfort makes the house seems like a prison. The boys are also trapped by geography as there are no neighbors for miles. At first, this is treated as a haven for the boys who can play in the cornfields, the forest, and the lake, but their isolation quickly turns from a blessing to a curse.

The film is very deliberately slow-paced, as directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala slow set up the film’s inevitable twist. Once the viewer knows the twist, watching the film for a second time is quite an interesting experience, as we pick up on all the small details leading up to the twist. The foreshadowing throughout the film is quite disturbing, and as a result, the film’s horror is elevated to an entirely new level when we rewatch the film.

Those horror fans that desire major scares, maybe slightly disappointed with Goodnight Mommy. This is a film that relies on the psychological aspects of the horror genre rather than cheap jump scares, and as a result, it’s far more effective in the long term. This is a film which will leave you waking up in the middle of the night, the horror of the film will invade your dreams and leave you unsettled for many nights to come.