Goodnight Mommy

I love language. I'm eternally fascinated by its intricacies and quirks. It's why, during the lifetime of George Carlin, many of my favorite routines of his revolved around language, like "Hello & Goodbye" and "Euphemisms". One aspect of language I find interesting is how synonyms can have implied differences. Listening and hearing both seem to be versions of the same verb, but there is an implied difference; one is the actual action of perceiving sound, and the other refers to actively paying attention and absorbing the information. Another pair of words like this would be mommy and mom. Both refer to the same human being -- your matriarchal progenitor -- but there is an implied difference. Mom is short for mother. It's a honorific title, like prince or officer. Mommy has aspects of a term of endearment. It's the word children use for the woman in their life who represents safety and home. There is a line from The Crow, and while it uses a different word, it expressed the sentiment better than I can: "Mother is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children." So what happens when that trust, that feeling of safe harbor and love, is broken and corrupted? And what happens when children -- capable of great flights of illogical fancy and a general lack of forward thinking and awareness of consequences -- believe that trust is gone and want it back? That's the premise of Goodnight Mommy; two brothers of nine welcome home their mother, who has had cosmetic surgery to her nose. She is short-tempered, almost cruel, and exhibits some bizarre behavior. They become convinced she is not their mother, and decide to fight back to get back the woman they love. The atmosphere and the way the story is told are where Goodnight Mommy shines brightest. The movie is presented almost entirely without a score, and the point of view constantly bounces and forth from the twins to the mother. At no point is the viewer told whom to sympathize with or manipulated in one direction or another. You are a witness, not an audience. Both the mother and the boys behave in ways that seem natural and in ways that seem alien. Goodnight Mommy has no interest in holding your hand. You are to be kept guessing until the final act, when all the pieces fall into place. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough for me to enjoy Goodnight Mommy. The acting choices actively betray the atmosphere, especially the two boys. Elias and Lukas Schwarz seem to have been told to act as if they don't have emotions under any circumstances. I understand that it's to keep the viewer guessing, but it doesn't work; the twins are robotic, devoid of emotion entirely. If I was nine and thought my mom had been body-swapped, I'd be in a panic. I'd be crying and terrified. These kids show the emotional range of someone filling out paperwork for the state. It just isn't believable that kids in this situation would react like this. Also working against the story is the lack of context. There are a number of details about their lives held back until the later stages of the movie, and some are strategic choices for the sake of a last-minute twist (which we'll get to). But some of them, if they were told earlier and expanded upon, could provide necessary context that would make it easier to see things from the twins' point of view. Because we don't get to see life before the mother's surgery. The audience is dropped into their lives the day she comes home, so we have no frame of reference for how she was before, or, for that matter, how the boys were before. All we get is the movie telling us something's changed, but we see nothing to that effect, and the scraps of the life before that are hinted at (a separation from a husband is mentioned but no details on why, and there's an implication that the surgery may have been repairing something) don't fill in enough gaps to make things click. And then there's the last-minute twist. Some people will see it coming, and in retrospect, I should've. Whether you do or don't, though, once it's said out loud, it ruins the movie. Not because it's illogical or impossible, but because it's so damned lazy. It adds nothing, and I would argue it actively detracts, because it comes so late, it'll be the last impression you're left with. There is definitely a lot of style on display in Goodnight Mommy. It doesn't need gory set pieces, there are no jump scares, and it doesn't feel the need to scream its horrors at the viewer. But it also doesn't know how to pace itself, it doesn't give the viewer the context or emotion needed to make the situation -- and therefore its horrors -- land, and if you haven't picked up on the twist ahead of time, you'll likely exclaim "are you kidding me?!?". I would be interested to see another movie from the pair who directed this, but only if they directed someone else's script instead of their own. Their talents definitely lie more on one side of the creative equation than the other.