Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Director
Veronika Franz
Cast
Elias Schwarz,
Lukas Schwarz,
Susanne Wuest,
Hans Escher,
Elfriede Schatz,
Karl Purker
Genre
Drama,
Horror,
Thriller
In the heat of the summer lays a lonesome house in the countryside where nine year old twin brothers await their mother’s return. When she comes home, bandaged after cosmetic surgery, nothing is like before and the children start to doubt whether this woman is actually who she says she is.
Goodnight Mommy is a paranoid fever dream twisting the rituals of boyhood to their most gruesome extent, distorting the flights of fancy of a child’s imagination until they transform into bouts of nervous obsession. Definitely up there with the Shining as one of the greats in the genre of “identical twins-based horror”.
Entertainment Weekly by Joe McGovern
Goodnight Mommy, a brilliantly sinister horror film in the recent art-house mold of "The Babadook" and "It Follows," has a premise that cracks like the whip of a devil’s tail.
Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan
It’s a masterful example of genre filmmaking’s ability to transcend its limitations, leaving a viewer not just frightened, but also changed.
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
The story's acceleration from anxiety to panic to hellish chaos is expertly managed, but more impressively, so is the control of internal narrative logic.
Los Angeles Times by Michael Rechtshaffen
Beginning with a gentle lullaby and ending with a tightly packed wallop, Goodnight Mommy is one viscerally chilling, seriously unsettling horror film.
Chicago Sun-Times by Richard Roeper
Goodnight Mommy is the kind of movie you should experience without watching the trailer or learning too much about it — and then experience again with the full knowledge of what happened, so you can admire the ways in which the puzzle was put together.
The A.V. Club by A.A. Dowd
This elegantly nasty little potboiler should satisfy those brave enough to brave it. They might see the big reveal coming, but that won’t help them unsee the horrors leading up to it.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
Unspooling with virtually no music and a seriously unsettling sound design, Goodnight Mommy gains significant traction from small moments.
Variety by Peter Debruge
Shooting in sleek 35mm, Franz and Fiala have dreamt up a home-invasion scenario where the aggressors lived there all along.
Arizona Republic by Bill Goodykoontz
Good movies create their own worlds, and that’s certainly true of Goodnight Mommy — even if it’s a world you wouldn’t want to live in.
Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov
An unnerving descent into the extreme, anxious corners of a mother’s relationship to and comprehension of her 9-year-old twin sons – and vice versa – gone weirdly haywire, Goodnight Mommy is required viewing for both lovers of neo-gothic paranoia and mommy-haters everywhere.
The Playlist by Jessica Kiang
It's a resonant, atmospheric horror film that treats its genre and its audience with unusual respect, before escalating in its last moments to a brilliantly uncompromised finale.
Village Voice by Amy Nicholson
Goodnight Mommy is a well-crafted cheat with a killer punch.
Slant Magazine by Chris Cabin
In the third act, the film devolves into an extremely unsettling series of sadistic tortures, the kind of stuff that would appeal largely to fans of Funny Games.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Perhaps a more unassuming genre director would have tightened this movie’s cables a little, so that it had more tension and less revulsion. At all events, it delivers some nasty shocks.
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