‘Goodnight Mommy’ Review: U.S. Remake of Austrian Thriller Pulls Back on the Tension
thewrap.comreally is — alone in the darkness, wearing a mask that covers her entire face, claiming she’s just had a medical procedure that prevents them from looking at her.Mommy has rules, like no visitors, no play dates and no entering quite a few rooms of the house.
And while at first Elias and Lukas make the most of this weird visit, they quickly come to suspect that Mommy — who refuses to sing their favorite song, and has torn up the pictures they made for her — might not be their real mother at all.Sobel (“Take Me to the River”) gets the most mileage out of the film’s first half, where the mystery mounts and the children’s imagination runs rampant.
If the children are right, and their mother is an imposter, all the signs are there to support them. If the children are wrong, they are still in deep trouble, because that means their mother is enduring some sort of severe mental-health crisis and is lashing out at them.
Either way, the children have every reason to be frightened.Watts, who has starred in quite a few horror remakes by now (“The Ring,” “Funny Games,” and the truly bizarre “The Shaft”), plays her role beautifully.
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