And that’s probably why we cannot bring ourselves to stop watching, even when it becomes unbearably brutal on screen. Review One of the scenes that contribute in creating a disturbing atmosphere and gripping tension.Įntirely shot on 35-millimeter film and enhanced by Martin Gschlacht’s beautiful cinematography, Goodnight Mommy is as much as an art film as it is a horror movie.
The German cultural platform Filmdienst compares her to a “younger sister of Tilda Swinton.” She has worked with critically acclaimed directors over the years such as Olivier Assayas and Gore Verbinski. She first gained international recognition for her leading role in Antares (2004) by Götz Spielmann.
Susanne Wuest, an Austrian actress born in 1979 in Vienna, plays the mother. Even with her face mostly covered, Susanne Wuest delivers a strong performance.
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To make it more immersive, the movie was shot in chronological order, and the twins discovered what was happening in their scenes on the day they were shot. They were selected from more than 240 pairs of identical twins for their innocent yet potentially sinister look. Cast Elias and Lukas can easily shift from an angelic face to an ominous look.Įlias and Lukas Schwarz play the twins Elias and Lukas. The woman is engulfed in flames and burns to death. Dissatisfied with this answer, Elias carries out his threats and sets the house ablaze. She has not been ignoring one of her children: Lukas was the product of a coping mechanism, and only Elias can see him. Their captive explains that she is indeed their mother but that Elias is not in his right mind since the death of his brother Lukas. The torture grows more and more violent, until Lukas and Elias threaten to burn the house down. When the woman wakes up, she’s tied to the bed and has to endure numerous abuses from the two boys, who demand to know where their real mother is. After they tried to run and warn the local priest, who drives them right back to the house, they decide to take matters into their own hands. The discovery of a picture of their mother next to a woman who is her lookalike is the proof they need to confirm their suspicion. Meanwhile, the mother is still cold and distant, and the boys grow more and more suspicious: For them, it has become obvious that’s not their mother under the gauze. In their indivisibility and creepy quietness, they remind us of the twin girls in The Shining (1980). You can tell something is not quite right with those two: They play hide-and-seek, jump on the trampoline, or sneak a cat into their bedroom like any other kid, but they also collect humongous cockroaches they keep in a jar, create weird-looking masks…and also, it’s a cat’s corpse, not a live kitten. The boys escape the isolated house’s unsettling atmosphere by playing in the surrounding Austrian countryside. She keeps the blinds lowered, forbids the twins from making any noise at all in the house, purposely ignores Lukas - going as far as refusing to serve him food - and even hits Elias when he fails to follow her rules. In addition to that strange appearance, the mother (who is never named) starts exhibiting unnerving behavior.
Plot Summary The two identical twin protagonists, Elias and Lukas Schwarz.Įlias and Lukas (played by the eponymous Elias and Lukas Schwarz), two nine-year-old twins, are taken aback when their mother (Susanne Wuest) comes home after undergoing extensive plastic surgery, leaving her whole face wrapped in bandages with only her eyes and mouth visible. You can tell that if there’s that much symbolism in the title, we have a lot to unpack in this analysis! From the twisted mother role to the use of masks and silence throughout the movie, we’ll see how Goodnight Mommy manages to build up such a gripping tension. Its international title that sounds like a creepy lullaby is far from the original German one, Ich Seh, Ich Seh ( I See, I See), referring to twin protagonists’ dual point of view and pointing out how misleading one’s perception can be. Making their debut as writer/directors, Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala follow the lead of other great Austrian directors such as Michael Haneke (no doubt there’s a Funny Games (1997) twist in the film’s brutal, sadistic last part) and Ulrich Seidl ( The Paradise Trilogy, 2012), who produced Goodnight Mommy and is Franz’s husband and Fiala’s uncle. After a relatively quiet January 2015 premiere in its home country of Austria, the horror movie Goodnight Mommy (2015) terrified American theatergoers in September 2015 and has since earned a well-deserved reputation as a disturbing arthouse horror film.
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