Rating of
3/4
Worth checking out
Matthew Brady - wrote on 09/21/15
This movie has probably the most misleading and the most spoiled filled trailer I've seen in awhile. If you haven't seen the trailer yet then please stay far way from it, because the trailer as I said is very misleading and for some reason it connects a couple of scenes together in the trailer to make you think something happens that never occurred in the movie. You've been warned.
The story is about a lonely house between the woods and cornfields - the summer sweltering. Two brothers, 9-year-old twins, wait for their mother to come home following her plastic surgery. She arrives, bruised and bandaged - the boys don't trust this "stranger" and soon the fundamentals of trust and identity emerge.
Before seeing 'Goodnight Mommy', I was expecting it to be the 2015 "Babadook", just because of the hype from the trailer alone and how both movies had that psychological thriller to it. I was looking forward to seeing this movie, because indie horror movies can really get to me sometimes and that's by it's brilliant way of building up suspense, creating a chilling sense of it's atmosphere, and the fear itself. All that was basically in the trailer to "Goodnight Mommy" which people have called it "the scariest trailer their ever seen", which I bet those people never seen any other horror trailers. Me and everyone else was expecting a scary thriller from what we got from the trailer, and what I've being hearing so far is that the trailer completely lied to us and the movie itself is not what you think. This is a problem with movie trailers today as I feel they need to pick the right people to edit the trailer probably. Trailers like: The Babadook, Drive, Edge of Tomorrow, Cabin in the Woods and Paddington are the kind of misleading trailers that I'm sick of seeing, because it's basically lying to the audience on the type of movie their watching.
I finally watched Goodnight Mommy and I actually enjoyed it...for what it was. It may not be the "scariest horror movie of the year", but it dose have it's good and also disappointing moments in it's total run time.
What I quickly noticed in the movie is that no one acts normal. The mother and the two kids are extremely strange and that alone sets up this world of itself with many strange things that could easily happen. That's the biggest thing Goodnight Mommy dose perfectly well is by making you feel uncomfortable and gives you that psychological feel to it.
All the performances in the movie were pretty good, I mean the kid actors wasn't terrible as I thought they were going to be, because most kid actors in horror movies usually suck at acting, but not here. Susanne Wuest (Plays the mother) also did great in the movie as I felt she really added a lot to her character when it comes to acting suspicious and not quite herself, and Susanne absolutely nailed it.
Now for the bad: The last half of this movie suddenly turns into this Hostel type film and that's when I was a little disappointed with, because too me it felt really unneeded and unnecessary. It was thrown in there for shock and to make the audience gasp. The movie acts like it has a deep meaning to it and what were the boys thinking and how they don't understand a lot of the things that was going on, but it just didn't mash well together.
The movie started off pretty strong and quite promising, but then it quickly loss that mature psychological thrill it had, and then all of a sudden it jumped to this over the top violence that just felt thrown in. It literally felt like a different director came in on the last minute. But keep in mind that this is just my opinion and you can disagree whatever you want.
The writing as well doesn't always work when you look back at certain events that happened in the movie, and yes I'm talking about that unneeded torture scene.
Overall Goodnight Mommy was a very creepy movie that I had a great time watching. The movie is very unsettling at times and I also like how different it is from other horror movie we've seen many times before. The movie has it's flaws but I still recommend seeing Goodnight Mommy if your interested or not, just please don't watch the trailer.
