GOODNIGHT MOMMY (2022)

Studio:     Amazon Studios
Director:    Matt Sobel
Writer:     Kyle Warren
Producer:  Joshua Astrachan, David Kaplan, V.J. Guibal, Nicolas Brigaud-Robert
Stars:     Naomi Watts, Cameron Crovetti, Nicholas Crovetti, Peter Hermann, Crystal Lucas-Perry, Jeremy Bobb

Review Score:

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Summary:

Twin brothers suspect that the woman they are staying with following her facial surgery may not be their real mother.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Father drops off twin brothers Elias and Lukas to stay with their divorced mother, a famous actress recovering from recent facial surgery, at her remote ranch house. Elias soon begins noticing strangely aggressive and unusual behavior from Mother, whose bandages hide most of her face.

Despite Mother’s insistence that it is off limits, Elias and Lukas sneak into the barn outside. Elias becomes curious about a bloody bullet hole found in a wooden post. Upset about her demand being disobeyed, Mother admonishes Elias and forbids him from leaving the house again.

After observing more odd behavior from Mother, including finding a discarded drawing Elias drew of Mother with the two brothers, Lukas suggests the bandaged woman may not be their real mother. From her headshot, the boys observe Mother now has different colored eyes. Mother destroys Elias’s cellphone after discovering he tried to call Father. She also breaks into the brothers’ bedroom and abuses Elias with bathtub water after he accuses her of being an imposter.

Lukas convinces Elias to flee to a neighbor’s house for help. Finding the house empty, the boys sleep there for the night. State troopers Gary and Sandy discover the boys trespassing. Elias explains his concerns about Mother, but the troopers return the brothers to Mother’s custody anyway.

Elias and Lukas use duct tape to restrain Mother to her bed while she sleeps. Demanding to know where their real mother is, Elias repeatedly douses Mother with water while confronting her about things like the torn drawing and differently colored eyes.

Mother explains that she uses colored contact lenses, which she keeps in her purse. Lukas searches Mother’s purse, but tells Elias that the contacts aren’t in there because she is lying.

Lukas continues pressing Elias to run away and leave Mother tied up. Mother implores Elias to not listen to his brother. Lukas compels Elias to gag Mother with a sock. Gary and Sandy return to the house, but they eventually leave without incident.

Elias finds the colored contact lenses in Mother’s purse. Realizing his brother lied, Elias fights with Lukas before running upstairs to free Mother.

Mother escorts Elias to the barn. Mother shows Elias the bloody bullet hole and explains that Elias accidentally shot and killed Lukas. As a coping mechanism, Elias created an imaginary version of his brother, who wasn’t real all along.

Frustrated and angered by the revelation, Elias pushes Mother off of the barn’s loft. Mother dies from the fall while her oil lantern starts a fire.

Elias escapes the burning barn in tears. Elias ends up comforted by imaginary incarnations of both Mother and Lukas.

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Review:

An age-old question about remakes often asks, “Why do they only remake ‘good’ movies?” As in, wouldn’t it make more sense to try again with films that flopped the first time around rather than futz with beloved classics or update movies generally thought to not need improvement?

Using something from the horror genre as an example, one might wonder, why remake Clive Barker’s original “Hellraiser” instead of, let’s say, “Hellraiser: Revelations,” the partial “found footage” flick with a chubby Pinhead that Dimension rushed into production merely as a means of retaining property rights? Or, for an example more specific to this site, if you’re going to beef up a budget and recast with recognizable actors, why not produce a shinier version of “Amityville Clownhouse” (review here) or “Amityville Vampire” (review here) instead of rehashing material from Jay Anson’s source novel for the umpteenth time?

“Goodnight Mommy,” Amazon’s 2022 English adaptation of the same-named German thriller from 2014 (review here), tacks on an addendum that additionally asks, why remake a movie whose impact hinges on a major revelation when audiences familiar with the film already know the big secret ahead of time? Imagine if M. Night Shyamalan’s 1999 blockbuster “The Sixth Sense” were remade in the mid-2000s with Keanu Reeves in the Bruce Willis role and Daniel Radcliffe as the boy who sees dead people. You’d scratch your head at the remake’s announcement and think, “Wait, why would I want to see a twist-dependent movie whose ending I already saw seven or eight years ago?”

Maybe that comparison isn’t entirely fair because “Goodnight Mommy” remakes a foreign-language film and, as we know, American audiences en masse tend to stay away from subtitles. Maybe enough people are unaware of “Goodnight Mommy’s” hook that they can go into this new one blind. Even so, “Goodnight Mommy” remains a movie whose big reveal is now more obvious than ever, which begets another question, “If you’re not going to make a movie better, or even remotely different, why remake it at all?”

Kyle Warren’s new screenplay changes next to nothing of import from Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s original script. It doesn’t even change the names of twin brothers Elias and Lukas, who were called that in the 2014 film because those were the real first names of the actors playing them. Now the boys are portrayed by Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti, the former of whom “The Boys” fans will recognize as Homelander’s superpowered son.

Instead of “Mother,” who is given no other name, coming home to the two boys after undergoing facial surgery, Elias and Lukas are sent to stay with their head-bandaged mum on her remote farm in the middle of nowhere, technically qualifying as one small detail this remake changes for no necessary reason. Mother appears to be behaving oddly since her operation, ultimately leading the twins to question if she actually is their real mother. Supposed suspense stems from this question of who Mother might be, although as indicated, “Goodnight Mommy” tips its hand incredibly early that Mother’s identity is a misdirect, and the movie’s true mystery can be seen from one hundred miles away whether you’ve watched the first film or not.

What Warren’s screenplay does do differently is to neuter nearly everything that made the original movie macabre and viscerally unnerving. Gone are any torturous scenes of callous physical punishment. In their stead are PG-13 replacements that are more palatable for everyday viewers streaming an innocuous B-movie. Meanwhile, director Matt Sobel terribly telegraphs the twist with highly suspect staging and direct dialogue engagements that practically scream the supposed secret like a bullhorn announcement echoing throughout the Grand Canyon. I can’t imagine a single person being shocked by the ending, let alone being excited by the dull, drawn-out drama it takes to limp there.

Entirely toothless, and entirely pointless, the painfully plain personality of this edition of “Goodnight Mommy” exists solely for people who simply can’t stand the subtitles of the superior original, or for Naomi Watts diehards who wish to see the actress be indistinctly underwhelming in a previously frightening role that has since been stripped of all suggestively sinister nuance. For those who already know the limited secrets “Goodnight Mommy” has in store, there is quite literally nothing new to see here, and they’d be wise to skip this remake unless they want to wonder, “Why would anyone bother with this movie at all?”

Review Score: 40

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