Everything isn’t as it seems, in Austria’s newest horror/thriller to hit America, “Goodnight Mommy”. Set in a lonesome house in the countryside between woods and corn fields, Nine year old twin brothers are waiting for their mother to return home. When she comes home, bandaged after cosmetic surgery, nothing is like before. The children start to doubt that this woman is actually their mother. It emerges an existential struggle for identity and hostile circumstances. The many things that “Goodnight Mommy” does well on a technical aspect far outweighs that of the many problems I had with the film, including an easy-way-out twist that is becoming commonplace for every horror film with a twist ending. First of all, there is the setting. This film showcases beautiful open field shots of forrests and corn fields. There’s a real sense of isolation here with very small cast around our main characters. The film was shot in 35 MM, and I think it was a great choice when really establishing the dark tones visually inside of the house. The film also makes the great choice to leave most musical scoring on the cutting room floor. This is a film about haunting visuals and psychological distress, so the movie relies more on making it feel like a real family going through real problems in front of your very eyes. The first act of this film was among the very best that i have seen in any horror film from the last decade. There’s so much to be said about the past and the future of the movie’s opening scene, and it sets the precedent a little too well for where we are going by film’s end. More on that in a minute. The movie starts to take a downturn by the second act, as a lot of this is used for exposition scenes, and really works to earn it’s title of slowburn. One of the things that really surprised me about the film is that it’s not the movie that the trailers were advertising. I even greatly have a problem labeling this film as a horror movie, because it’s a suspence thriller. The film has no gore until the final twenty minutes when all hell breaks loose, and the film becomes a torture treat. This part of the movie really didn’t fit for me, as the film had built itself up as one thing up to that point and did it really well, then settled for something completely different that we get far too much in modern horror. And then we get to the twist. This part of the film will no doubt cement how you feel about the movie in one way or another. I enjoyed mostly everything up to that point, so the ending only did minimal damage to how I felt about the overall product. There’s a lot that got me discouraged about this twist. For one, it doesn’t make sense. There are many holes in the events that take place during the second act that make no sense when you reflect on how they were done with the limiting results we are left with. I’m not going to spoil the twist, but there is too much about this that has a feeling of a lack of creativity. The film’s plot had a fresh take that would put any of us in a very scary situation, with the person we love the most not being who they say they are. Instead, the film takes a route that was easy to spot ten minutes into the movie, and that is what’s really disappointed with a movie that i was greatly looking forward to. “Goodnight Mommy” crafts a real scary treat. It’s artistic eye for disturbing details, makes this film stand out, even if the ending keeps it from becoming a real triumph for the genre.

6/10