If a film’s big twist ending fails to deliver, does that
automatically negate all the good will that led up to that twist? That’s what I found myself asking as I
watched the final moments of Austrian horror flick Goodnight Mommy. I had
guessed the movie’s big surprise ending within the first five minutes of screen
time, and the film never really did a whole lot to disavow that
assumption. But that did not keep me
from enjoying the film anyway. So why is
that?
Well, I think it at least partially has to do with the film’s rather
novel set-up. A pair of twins, Elias and
Lukas, begin to notice that their mother has been acting strangely ever since
her recent car accident. Her face is
bandaged up, her behavior is erratic and decidedly more mean-spirited than they
remember, and strangest of all, she only gives Elias any food or acknowledges
his presence. The twins suspect that
this woman isn’t really their mother and start to devise a plan to torture the
truth out of her.
Now, I’m sure that some of you were able to guess the big
twist just from that summary, especially if you are familiar with a few
particular major films from around the turn of the century. The suspicion that the mother is not who she
says she is isn’t ever all that convincing, but seeing how she interacts with
her children and how they interact with each other is still pretty intriguing,
especially considering that their interactions with the outside world are
confined to a few specific instances.
This is a slow burner to be sure, and though it has a tendency to drag
on for short stretches, Goodnight Mommy
seems much more interested in letting us stew over whether our suspicions of
the twist ending are correct, rather than trying to shock us with a big reveal.
It’s also pretty subtle when it finally arrives at the
child-torturing-parent stuff that acts as the film’s main selling point. It’s easy to picture an American version of
this film resorting to the most gaudy and over-the-top special effects to make
its audience feel they’ve got their money’s worth in blood. However, this Austrian flick is content to
let the horror of the situation sit pretty much in reality, without visual extremes beyond piss-stained sheets
and only-as-necessary blood. The
biggest impact is psychological, as the twins, particularly Elias, try to come
to grips with harming someone they love, or at least someone they believe is
impersonating someone they love. It
smacks of a child’s limited grasp of consequence, which makes the film tense
not only for the situation itself, but because the twins don’t seem able to
stop the train wreck of problems their actions have begun to build up to.
That said, it still feels pretty unsatisfying when the big
climactic reveal at the end of the film doesn’t carry the weight it feels like
it ought to. But that shouldn’t discount
the feelings the film evokes while getting there. The twist ending is based upon a what is now
a cliché, but the avenue by which it gets there is still disturbingly
satisfying to watch, putting a new spin on the creepy child trope of popular
horror fiction. Though I wouldn’t go so
far as to say this is a new classic of modern horror among the ilk of It Follows or The Babadook, it still works pretty well for what it is aiming
for. Give this one a look, particularly
if you don’t mind subtitles.
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