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Produced in 2014, “Goodnight Mommy,” an Austrian import from co-filmmakers Veronica Franz and Severin Fiala , was a diabolical and queasily effective item that took one of the most primal of fears—that the people that we know and love have somehow been replaced—and filtered it through an examination of the societal belief in an unbreakable bond between a mother and her children that took things to often ghastly extremes. The result was a strong, stylish and often unnerving genre that actually lived up to the hype that it had generated amongst horror fans. Perhaps inevitably, the film has now been given the dubious honor of an Americanized remake and, perhaps just as inevitably, it is a staggeringly pointless endeavor. This "Goodnight Mommy" replicates the basic story beats of the original but leaves out all of the tension, ambiguity, and nasty invention that made that earlier effort so effective in the first place.

As the film opens, young twin brothers Elias and Lucas ( Cameron Crovetti and Nicholas Crovetti ) are being dropped off by their father at the isolated country home belonging to their mother ( Naomi Watts ), their first time seeing her in apparently some time. It turns out that Mom has secretly undergone some kind of medical procedure that has left her head completely swathed in bandages. That is disconcerting enough but as the kids settle in, they begin to sense that other things about her are not quite right—she is quick to get upset, she now seems to be a smoker, she refuses to sing the song that she used to do for them at bedtime and she forbids them from going into the barn out back. Oddest of all, she seems to be directing most of her attention towards Elias while barely acknowledging that Lucas even exists.

To the brothers, these bizarre developments can only lead to one conclusion—the person they are staying with is actually an imposter who has done something terrible to their mothers. Increasingly frightened by Mom’s seemingly irrational behavior and unable to contact their father, they try to flee to safety in the middle of the night. When that doesn’t work out, they become determined to get the apparent interloper to admit that she is a fraud and to reveal where their mother is. And yet, even after being duct taped to her bad and doused with ice water, she still insists that she really is their mother. Although Lucas remains firmly convinced that she is not who she is, Elias finds himself torn between his doubts over her identity and the lengths that he is willing to go to in order to prove it.

As I said, this version conforms to the basic parameters of the original film but mucks about the details in ways that prove to be disastrous. For starters, the often cruel and brutal means employed by the brothers in order to elicit the information that they want (including some particularly nasty uses for superglue, scissors, and a magnifying glass) have been eliminated, which considerably lowers the horror quotient. That would be acceptable if the film had bothered to replace them with anything interesting but it doesn’t. Screenwriter Kyle Warren and director Matt Sobel are weirdly determined to strip away the ambiguous nature of the original narrative that proved to be just as unnerving as the more overt violence in order to give the unfolding events a far more literal and much less interesting interpretation. This version plods along before arriving at the startling twist that now proves to be anything but in their hands.

One could argue, I suppose, that as someone who saw and greatly admired the original film, my perspective on the film will inevitably be different from that of someone who never saw the previous version and who is coming into this one with fresh eyes. That said, my guess is that even newcomers to the story will be left cold by this version. The story is clumsily handled, the suspense is practically nonexistent and the vibe that it evokes is more idiotic than surreal. More damaging is the fact that the film never convincingly establishes the terror of the situation because at no point do we ever care for a moment if the woman is indeed their mother or not or how far the brothers will go to confirm their belief. 

The closest thing to a saving grace is the performance by Watts, who gives it her all but who is eventually undone by the cloddishness of the screenplay. (That said, between this and her appearance in the remake of the equally nasty “ Funny Games ,” I would gently suggest that she try to avoid appearing in any further American takes on sadistic Austrian cult films in which her character undergoes extensive torture at the hands of a pair of young sadists within the confines of her coldly sterile and decidedly isolated home.)

For those who saw the original “Goodnight Mommy,” this version will seem like an unforgivable botch that will go down as a quintessential example of what comes out when an offbeat foreign film is put through the American filmmaking apparatus in the hopes of attracting viewers who are more afraid of subtitles than sadism. Newcomers are likely to find it a crashing and crashingly obvious bore that will leave them wondering what all the fuss regarding the original was about in the first place. At least both groups will be able to come together in the shared realization that this “Goodnight Mommy” is one of the most patently unnecessary films of the year.

Now playing on Prime Video.

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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Goodnight Mommy (2022)

Rated R for some language.

Naomi Watts as Mother

Cameron Crovetti as Elias

Nicholas Crovetti as Lucas

Peter Hermann as Father

Jeremy Bobb as Gary

Crystal Lucas-Perry as Sandy

Writer (based on the film "Goodnight Mommy" by)

• Veronika Franz
• Severin Fiala
• Kyle Warren

Cinematographer

• Alexander Dynan
• Michael Taylor
• Alex Weston

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Goodnight Mommy Review

A remake that’s more goodnight audience..

Goodnight Mommy debuts on Prime Video on Sept. 16, 2022.

Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s Goodnight Mommy (2014) smashes through your ribcage, tears out your heart, and watches with glee as you writhe — a decade-defining bounty of scorching bleakness. Matt Sobel’s new American remake abandons all the skin-crawling imagery and punishing violence to differentiate itself, not replicate. As Sobel himself says in press materials: “We saw the opportunity to do something quite common in theater but unusual in cinema: to adhere roughly to the original plot but reframe it in a way that completely changes its meaning — and perhaps even its genre.” In other words, ditch the vicious playtime horror angle Franz and Fiala use to torment spellbound viewers. Sobel aims for something more traditionally dramatic, stripping Goodnight Mommy of everything audiences praise about the Austrian original.

Brothers Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti respectively portray knee-high siblings Elias and Lucas. Naomi Watts stars as “Mommy,” in recovery after facial reconstruction surgery that requires a white netted bandage to cover her head. Goodnight Mommy is told from the children’s perspective as they notice quirks in Mommy that suggest she’s been replaced by a doppelgänger — Watts is comfortably alien in her skin, stoking the children’s imagination. The Crovettis feed off adolescent curiosity that drives suspicious boys away from their supposed blood mother. Their visitation quickly morphs from a joyful reunion (mom and dad separated) to body-swap imprisonment as perceived by undeveloped minds.

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Sobel and screenwriter ​​Kyle Warren admit they’re not as interested in mirroring the original’s six-feet-deep graveness, instead fixating on behavioral character dynamics. Elias and Lucas become miniature detectives while Mother flies off the handle, tears apart crayon artwork, and screeches heartless orders toward her quivering children. Goodnight Mommy depends on preconceptions that favor childhood sympathies and begrudge elder mistakes as suspense hangs in limbo. Seeing is believing as Sobel warps storytelling by showing how quickly we can position ourselves as heroes or victims of our narratives — never villains. He’s targeting something more psychologically subtle that views bodily cockroach invasions and youthful rage as distractions from sociological evaluations.

In doing so, Goodnight Mommy becomes another hum-drum American remake that’s never willing to sensationalize or instigate like foreign horror. Sobel’s aforementioned quote nears dreaded “it’s not really a horror movie” territory, which loses visual impact despite a crisply shot homebound thriller that manipulates Elias’ and Lucas’ viewpoints. Whatever standout imagery Franz and Fiala unleash from arts-and-crafts masks turned warrior’s headgear to their mommy’s undergone physical torture vanish from Sobel’s more squeaky-clean Goodnight Mommy sans Elias’ nightmares about what’s hiding under Mother’s skin. It’s disappointing because the Crovettis and Watts put in work to exacerbate blame, only for the more cut-and-dry mystery to stop being so despicably mysterious.

Prime Video’s Goodnight Mommy never builds inescapable endangerment nor amplifies wretchedness. There’s a gear missing as Elias and Lucas are left convincing police officers they’re safe or deciding how to coax the truth out of their mother. The human element that Sobel aims to highlight becomes less commanding as cinematographer Alexander Dynan’s shot selection isn’t as ambiguous about what Goodnight Mommy strives to hide until the film’s finale. It’s not that Sobel’s a fool for approaching his remake from a different angle — in fact, kudos — but his execution misunderstands what makes Franz and Fiala’s the sinister showstopper it is. Sobel’s is more spelled-out, less sucker-punchy, and suffers from American domestication that does everything you’d fear to temper Austrian angst.

Competence isn’t enough when comparison points exist, and that’s the danger of remake filmmaking. Sobel does well breathing cold horror air in a sequence that nails its scares in an abandoned neighboring house where Elias and Lucas fortify themselves. Watts embellishes motherly aggression to firmly plant us in Elias and Lucas’ corner, doing her best to shadow whatever reality exists between Elias’ replacement mamma accusations and Mommy’s instance that she’s just rattled from surgery. The difference is Franz and Fiala capitalize on unrest, instigating ugliness that spirals into an uncontainable explosion and leaves our jaws on the floor — Sobel gives us too much time to think, process, and decipher. Here are the building blocks; that’s all you get.

Goodnight Mommy might be passable as a standalone, but it’s impossible to recommend over the original. Matt Sobel and ​​Kyle Warren venture somewhere new that still doesn’t differentiate nearly enough for its quieter approach. Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s original Goodnight Mommy nestles amongst my nightmares — Sobel’s iteration acid-washes away genre exquisiteness. It’s a sanitized version that undersells its twists and bungles an otherwise unspeakable ending; a real [REC] to Quarantine scenario that can’t help Americanizing its remake like waterlogging spiked punch. It loses its bite, dilutes the flavor, and weakens the impact — not ideal for anyone who likes their horror at 100 proof.

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‘Goodnight Mommy’ Review: Behind the Mask

Twin boys worry that their mother might be an impostor in this disappointing remake.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

Far be it from me to quibble over punctuation, but the absence of the vocative comma in the title of “Goodnight Mommy” — an American remake of the Austrian chiller of the same name — should be read as a warning of other, more problematic omissions.

Like the prickling atmosphere of dread that blanketed the original and is only pallidly reproduced here. The plot, though, remains roughly the same: Twin boys, Elias and Lucas (Cameron Crovetti and Nicholas Crovetti), arrive at their mother’s isolated country home after an unspecified absence to find her head swathed in gauze and her behavior apparently altered. Telling the boys she has undergone “a little procedure,” Mommy (Naomi Watts) bars them from her darkened quarters, and also — uh-oh! — from the barn. Is she an impostor?

That question will be answered, if without the aesthetic elegance, masterly editing or rumbling horror of the first film. Even so, Kyle Warren’s screenplay is potent enough to generate several moments of suspense, and Watts, an exceptional actor sidelined too often by poor choices , is not the problem here. That would be the decision to jettison the children’s most creative cruelties — and consequently much of the movie’s tension — and a director, Matt Sobel, who’s determined to steer the audience toward a specific interpretation of events. The result is a film that feels lazily compressed and overly literal, suggesting a lamentable discomfort with ambiguity that’s all too common in arthouse-to-mainstream retreads.

The new movie’s late-pandemic timing and the ubiquity of masking, however, add a fresh layer to the psychological underpinnings of both films. Perhaps never before have we understood so clearly how much of our ability to trust rests on being able to see the entirety of the human face.

Goodnight Mommy Rated R for disturbing dreams and dirty dancing. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video .

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‘Goodnight Mommy’ Review: Naomi Watts Is a Mysterious Mother in Lo-Fi Horror Remake

Christian zilko.

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For most horror remakes, even mediocrity is a respectable outcome.  By now, every horror fan should know the feeling of walking into a remake with modest expectations, then walking out feeling more disappointed than thought possible.

“ Goodnight Mommy ” largely succeeds in its quest to avoid that fate. Matt Sobel’s reimagining of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s 2014 Austrian film of the same name never tries to reinvent the wheel, but while it lacks the potency of the original film, it manages to keep horror lovers entertained without ever embarrassing itself.

Lukas and Elias (Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti) can’t catch a break. The film begins with their divorced dad dropping them off at their mother’s country estate, though he stays in the car to avoid confronting her. When the two boys wander inside, it’s clear their mom ( Naomi Watts ) was unprepared for their visit and doesn’t seem largely interested in spending time with them. This leads to a rather cold existence for the boys, who are prohibited from entering certain rooms of the house, forced to keep the blinds closed, and left to their own devices without much to do. Oh, and there’s the fact that their mom had major cosmetic surgery without telling them, and now has to keep her face covered in bandages. So they’re essentially being raised by a mummy.

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The boys are immediately struck by how much she has changed, beginning to speculate about whether the woman behind the bandages is actually their mother. They start noticing details, including that her eyes appear to have changed colors, which only pours gasoline on those suspicions. Their distrust causes this woman, who may or may not be their mother, to start behaving erratically. If you suspect your children are afraid of you, putting their cell phone down the garbage disposal and forcibly spraying them with cold water is unlikely to smooth things over.

The tension in the house eventually becomes unbearable, and the twins run away. They are eventually picked up by the police, who don’t believe their stories of abuse and return them to their mother’s house. This only makes things worse, until the situation reaches a boiling point when they tie their mother to her bed and refuse to let her go until they get the truth. No matter how dark that truth may be.

Sobel should be commended for telling a compelling story without much filmmaking pizazz, letting natural tension emerge from the upsetting premise and the depressingly sterile house these children find themselves living in. One dream sequence where Watts removes her skin to reveal a Xenomorph-esque creature underneath is delightfully grotesque, but that moment stands out as an anomaly in a film that succeeds by relying on its weird vibes. The creepy movie largely suffers when it tries to shift gears and deliver actual terror, and some of its most “brutal” scenes serve as reminders of how it pales in comparison to the work that inspired it. Some of the most striking images in the original “Goodnight Mommy” see the two boys torturing their mother for information, but Sobel’s rendition of those scenes is harmless by comparison. The result is a film that creates a passable backdrop for a horror movie but never quite delivers the highs it promises.

Still, as far as horror remakes go, “Goodnight Mommy” is certainly one of the less egregious ones. The antiseptic production design and grey digital photography that bog down so many comparable projects feel appropriate in a story about people trying to move on from divorce and death. The acting is solid, even if the kids are never quite creepy enough to convince us that they could really be the aggressors that they ultimately turn into. The script is well-structured, wasting no time in setting up the action but letting its twist ending unfold at its own pace. It’s a film that seemingly aims to be average, but unlike so many other remakes, it actually achieves that goal.

“Goodnight Mommy” is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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Goodnight mommy, common sense media reviewers.

Horror-thriller has intense peril, disturbing violence.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

No positive role models in creepy horror movie --

One of the secondary characters is a Black woman.

Horror imagery, including a nightmare in which the

Some strong language. "F--k" used a few times. "As

A mother smokes cigarettes, drinks wine, drinks wi

Parents need to know that Goodnight Mommy is a 2022 psychological horror movie in which twin boys reunited with their mother suspect that she's actually someone else. This is a remake of the 2014 Austrian movie of the same title. There are some disturbing moments of abusive behavior from the mother to her…

Positive Role Models

No positive role models in creepy horror movie -- plot twists reveal no one is who the audience thinks they are. Police officers are distracted and useless.

Diverse Representations

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Horror imagery, including a nightmare in which the other is ripping off her human skin to reveal alien skin before she attacks one of her sons. Talk of an accidental shooting death. Some disturbing scenes of child abuse, as a mother slaps her son (a cut on his lower lip appears shortly after), drags him into a bathtub, and douses him in water after he denies that she's his mother. A mother is tied up in bed by her sons, then gagged. Peril as twin boys hide from their mother, in the house or in their beds.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Some strong language. "F--k" used a few times. "Ass."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A mother smokes cigarettes, drinks wine, drinks wine while taking sleeping pills.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Goodnight Mommy is a 2022 psychological horror movie in which twin boys reunited with their mother suspect that she's actually someone else. This is a remake of the 2014 Austrian movie of the same title. There are some disturbing moments of abusive behavior from the mother to her kids, including a scene in which one of the boys, after telling the woman that she's not his mother, is slapped hard in the face (a scab appears on his lower lip shortly after) and then dragged into the bathroom, where he's showered with water until he says that she's his mother. A mother is tied up in bed and then gagged by her sons. Talk of an accidental shooting death. Horror imagery, peril, suspense. Some language, including "f--k." Wine drinking, cigarette smoking, taking sleeping pills while drinking wine. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

In GOODNIGHT MOMMY, Elias and Luke are twin boys who are driven to a remote house where their mother ( Naomi Watts ), a famous actress, is recuperating from plastic surgery. While initially happy to be reunited with their mother, it doesn't take long for them to suspect that something is wrong. Their mother no longer wants to sing their lullaby, she acts cold and distant to them, and has taken up smoking. As her behavior toward them becomes increasingly strict and severe, the boys are convinced that the woman behind the bandages isn't their mother. They plan their escape, but with their father not returning their calls and the house being far from the nearest town, they soon realize that in order to escape, they'll have to employ more drastic methods.

Is It Any Good?

This is an unsettling psychological horror movie that's slightly dragged down by horror movie cliches. Goodnight Mommy starts off with a cool premise: Twin boys reunited with their mother who's recuperating from surgery that has her face covered in bandages are convinced that her erratic and cold behavior towards them is due to this person not being their mother. Their imaginations run wild with speculation as to who their mother really is, and it's initially fun to play along as the audience, but after one "hint-hint" and plot twist too many, it doesn't take that long to suss out that nothing is what it seems, and the proverbial "big reveal" comes across as disappointing and rushed.

It's unfortunate, because the acting is strong across the board, and after everything more or less makes sense, the quality of Naomi Watts' performance is all the more rewarding. By all accounts, the original 2014 Austrian movie on which this is a remake is the better and more disturbing movie, and also does more to heighten what's really happening. That said, it's still a fun watch despite the tropes of horror movie cops who don't do their jobs, head-fake scenes that are just nightmares, jump scares, etc.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about psychological horror movies like Goodnight Mommy . Why do you think movies like this are so popular?

This is a remake of a 2014 movie of the same title. Why do you think Hollywood remakes so many movies? Are they ever as good as the original movies? Why or why not?

Movies like these are known for having plot twists that are intended to surprise and keep the audience guessing. Were you surprised by this movie's plot twists? Why or why not? What are some other movies with plot twists?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : September 16, 2022
• Cast : Naomi Watts , Cameron Crovetti , Nicholas Crovetti
• Director : Matt Sobel
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Amazon Studios
• Genre : Horror
• Topics : Brothers and Sisters
• Run time : 91 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : Some language.
• Last updated : December 1, 2022

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‘goodnight mommy’ review: naomi watts loses out in a horror remake that dilutes the chills.

Matt Sobel reworks the 2014 Austrian nerve-shredder about twin brothers convinced the bandaged woman in their home recovering from surgery is not their mother.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Twin brothers Elias and Lukas (Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti) are dropped off by their father (Peter Hermann) to stay at the isolated country house of their famous mother (Watts), an actress recovering from surgery. The boys are somewhat freaked out when she greets them with her head wrapped in bandages and her face completely obscured aside from her eyes. She assures them it’s nothing to be afraid of: “Mommy just had a little procedure. I just needed a change, a fresh start.”

Right off the bat, Warren’s script over-explains instead of maintaining some mystery — the brothers’ parents are separated and their suddenly self-absorbed mother just had major face work done, so it could be the story of half the kids in Beverly Hills.

Elias and Lukas anger their mother when she catches them in the barn, where something ugly appears to have transpired. But the boys are more startled by her behavior when she thinks she’s alone and they sneak into her bedroom to observe her. Once a staunch nonsmoker, she’s now puffing away while dancing like a stripper in front of the mirror (to Edwyn Collins’ “A Girl Like You”). Watts’ physicality in that scene has a curious alien quality, echoed in Elias’ body-horror dreams.

As the brothers take steps to distance themselves from her, their mother becomes more enraged and even violent. But the local police (Crystal Lucas-Perry, Jeremy Bobb) attribute their claims of endangerment to the over-active imagination of children, forcing them to take drastic measures to figure out what happened to their mother.

Anyone who’s seen the Franz-Fiala version will recall that things got extremely creepy at that point, as the boys shed all vestiges of innocence and became sadistic in their interrogation methods. That worked to inject uncertainty into the audience’s sympathies, shifting between the monstrous mother and the threatened sons, who were anything but defenseless. The steady tightening of the vise as scene after scene ratcheted up tension was excruciating

Watts’ characterization is raw and abrasive enough to keep us guessing for a while, and the Crovetti brothers (seen previously as Nicole Kidman’s sons in Big Little Lies ) provide enough subtle distinctions to convey how the power dynamic works between Elias and Lukas. The uneven performances that compromised Sobel’s otherwise promising first feature, Take Me to the River , are not an issue here. But as solid as the cast is, the story feels short-changed in this muted reinvention.

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One of the decade’s best horror films is back — in the worst form

Goodnight Mommy’s Amazon reboot is a case study in how not to remake a great horror movie

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It might be unfair to compare remakes to their source films, but it’s also unavoidable for people who care about movies. While the common Hollywood lore says American audiences refuse to read subtitles, and English-language remakes open the film to broader audiences, it’s also true that a certain portion of the audience for any remake is made up of fans who want to see what a film has gained or lost in a second translation to the screen.

Remakes often lose something in the update process, but horror films seem to suffer more than most. There are outliers, like Let the Right One In ’s competent American remake Let Me In . But the reason that one works well only calls attention to the missteps of other remakes. Let Me In pulls from John Ajvide Lindqvist’s source novel as much as it takes from the original Swedish film. It maintains the original’s mood and tension, but The Batman and Cloverfield director Matt Reeves also didn’t set out to pay homage to Let the Right One In . Though his film isn’t as unwaveringly brilliant as the imported version of the story, Let Me In is a worthy horror film unto itself.

But sometimes remakes go spectacularly wrong. On the extreme end of the spectrum, there’s a new poster child for how not to remake a movie: the American version of Goodnight Mommy .

The original Austrian horror film Goodnight Mommy was released in 2015 after a long, heralded festival run across the globe. The debut narrative feature from writer-directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz is a brazen, unflinching horror film coming from a country not known for its horror industry. The Austrian cinematic landscape isn’t completely free from the dark side of film, but it’s more firmly known for comedy and historic dramas. Goodnight Mommy surprised horror fans with its origins — but it also shocked them with its extremity. Horror audiences are accustomed to creepy kids and mysterious events, but Goodnight Mommy pushed those ideas much further than the norm. Though the film (like the remake) is easily spoiled, it’s sufficient to say that its kids are creepy enough and the ending dark enough to shake even jaded horror aficionados.

When the English-language remake was announced for Goodnight Mommy , the biggest question looming was whether the new film would go as hard and end as nihilistically as the original. Not only does the remake lack the gumption to even approach the original film in terms of terror and on-screen pain, it doesn’t really work as a film in its own right.

The new version stars Naomi Watts as the titular Mommy. With the English-language remakes The Ring and Funny Games under her belt, Watts may have seemed like an easy choice for the lead of yet another American reboot of an international horror hit. The remake’s shortcomings aren’t due to her lack of craft or effort — the issues lie solely in the writing and directing.

Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti play twins Elias and Lucas, who have just been dropped off at their mother’s Connecticut farmhouse after she apparently separates from their father. The two boys seem playful and a bit cautious, until they see their mother for the first time on this visit. Mother (who is never given a name in the film) is wearing a huge bandage across her whole head, resembling a white balaclava. The boys are both alarmed at first, but they loosen up a little as they can see she’s making an effort to win them over, and they settle into their new family structure. That first night, after the boys have been tucked into their bunkbed, they talk about the fact that something is off with their mom.

In this moment, Goodnight Mommy completely drops the ball, and it never picks it back up. Not only does the film show its card on the creep factor of Mother nearly an hour earlier than the original, it establishes the fact that these boys will spend the movie talking constantly, voiding any sense of tension or ambiguity throughout the film. This take on Goodnight Mommy leans heavily on exposition. Director Matt Sobel (a director and producer on Netflix’s Brand New Cherry Flavor ) makes little to no attempt to establish an atmosphere, tension, or any kind of terrifying ambiguity. For fans of the original, the loss of everything that made the original version frightening is devastating. There’s no sense of dread in this horror movie, because these dang kids won’t shut up and just let the audience experience what should be the quiet trepidation of living with a potential monster.

Add to all of this the fact that these boys just aren’t weird. Twins are a major horror trope, capable of igniting the uncanny and bringing about uneasy feelings in film without too much explanation. (Just look at Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining .) But Sobel’s remake, scripted by Kyle Warren (a writer-producer on Fox’s Lethal Weapon TV series), completely ignores any and all character development with Elias and Lucas. The original version of these twins kept cockroaches as pets, made strange masks, and tingled viewers’ spines by communicating wordlessly. These two are just normal kids, or at least normal when they aren’t being overly verbose.

Heaped on top of that are myriad disappointing or confusing factors that span the entire film. There are strange, misplaced sexual moments with Mother preening at a mirror while Elias spies on her, angry outbursts from both Mother and the children that aren’t consistent with the characters or circumstances, and even a few cheap jump scares that lead nowhere. Not even to mention the nearly bloodless ending, which is both poorly filmed and takes as a given that the Ice Bucket Challenge is analogous to the exceptionally unnerving body horror in the original movie.

2014’s Goodnight Mommy is one of the best horror films of the last decade, but nearly every element that contributed to that quality has been ignored or reversed in this disappointment of a remake. Not all remakes are unequivocal failures, but this one is. The original version is streaming free on Vudu and Tubi . The new version isn’t worth watching, even at that same price point.

Goodnight Mommy debuts on Prime Video on Sept. 16.

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'Goodnight Mommy' Review: A Deeply Uncomfortable, Deeply Rewarding Experience

Note: While the first page of this review is spoiler-free, the second goes deep into spoiler territory. We ask that you mark spoilers in the comments, but proceed into the comments at your own risk.

To the best of my memory, I've only ever walked out on three movies in my life. Twice, it was at the behest of other people; once, I was simply bored. All three times were years before I began watching movies for work.

I did not walk out on Goodnight Mommy . But I came as close as I ever have in my professional career, which is a testament to how disturbing the film gets. And yet, in the end, I had to admit it more than paid me back for my deep discomfort, which is a testament to how ultimately brilliant it is. 

Written and directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz , Goodnight Mommy plays like a dark fairy tale — think Brothers Grimm, not Disney. Identical twin boys Lukas and Elias (played by real-life identical twins Lukas and Elias Schwarz ) live with their single mother in the Austrian countryside, idling away their summer floating on lakes, exploring dark caves, and chasing each other through cornfields when they're not lounging around their well appointed home.

Their idyll is shattered when their mother ( Susanne Wuest , who is almost too good — more on that later) returns from an unexplained plastic surgery procedure. The boys are understandably weirded out by her swollen, bandaged visage, but what really terrifies them is the change in her demeanor. Their once-sweet mother has come back sour. She's short on affection and quick to punish, and seems desperately jealous of her sons' closeness.

Goodnight Mommy relies more on uneasiness than gore or thrills. There's a pervasive sense that something isn't right, but little confirmation that anything is truly wrong. The uncertainty that lies in between grows until it becomes sickening. The mother's behavior is unquestionably erratic and cruel, and the house is littered with evidence of some horrific wrong she's tried to hide. But does that make her an impostor, as the boys increasingly suspect? Or is she just a bad mother?

On the flip side, while it's easy to sympathize with the boys' fear of their dramatically transformed mother, their own reactions don't quite sit right either. At first, we root for them to get to the bottom of the mystery, and to break free of the monster if necessary. But as they go to ever more extreme lengths to defend themselves, we start to wonder if there isn't something a little off about them too.

The talents in front of and behind the camera act in concert to keep us unsettled. Goodnight Mommy is a fairly quiet film, but that just magnifies every loud crunch, scratch, and thump. It's also fairly slow, employing languid takes that don't allow us to look away even when we'd desperately like to. And when there's nothing particularly upsetting happening onscreen, there's always the set to look at. The designers have filled it with innocuous yet unnerving details, like blurry, shadowy portraits and insect-print wallpaper.

These minimalist choices offer a generous showcase for the actors, who make the most of them. Wuest gives a tricky performance that keeps us guessing. Her cold, angry gaze makes her sons, and us, cower, but when she acts warm or vulnerable it's somehow even creepier. Her young co-stars are equally effective, playing the boys as both frightened and frightening. The whole film feels, somehow, both crisp and dreamlike — like a nightmare just before you're jolted awake.

They also make Goodnight Mommy , at times, excruciating to watch. As far as horror movies go, Goodnight Mommy isn't especially violent. But Fiala and Franz, and their actors, purposefully push the audience to their emotional limits. The scene that nearly broke me started out unpleasant, and then kept going and going until I wasn't sure I could bear any more.

The utterly committed performances completely sold the ugliness unfolding onscreen, and the editing and sound design made sure I felt every second of it. Even though I knew intellectually that I was just watching a bunch of actors play pretend on a set, the terror affected me viscerally. (Your mileage may vary here — some other critics I spoke to weren't nearly as freaked out as I was — but I can only speak from my personal experience.)

Goodnight Mommy is, in other words, a huge ask. All films demand something of the audience, in the form of time, money, and/or emotional investment; Goodnight Mommy 's first-time feature filmmakers put viewers through hell with the implicit promise that they'll make it all worth it in the end. The biggest surprise, for me, was that they actually make good on that contract. But a tiny part of me still resents that they asked so much of me at all.

Given all that, it's hard to blame anyone who decides to walk out of Goodnight Mommy , or just skip it altogether. Especially since this is a film that doesn't just spook and rattle in the moment, but one that'll leave audiences thinking for days or weeks afterward. If you do make the choice to see it, do yourself a favor and stick it all the way through. While Goodnight Mommy feels artful and confident throughout, its true brilliance can't be appreciated without looking at the film as a whole.

And on that note, let's proceed to the spoilers .

And now, because — as I said — Goodnight Mommy is impossible to fully appreciate without understanding the whole film, let's dive into spoilers . Major, paradigm-shifting spoilers, the kind you definitely don't want to read if you're even thinking of maybe someday watching the film. You've been warned. Proceed at your own risk.

The boys' increasingly dysfunctional relationship with their mother culminates in a scene where the boys tie their to her bed and proceed to torment the truth out of her — the "truth" being where their real mother is. When the woman tied to the bed won't, or can't, answer, the boys resort to such measures as burning her skin with a magnifying glass and Super Gluing her mouth shut.

This lengthy torture scene is what nearly inspired me to walk out. While not as lurid or extreme as a Saw -type torture scene, it struck me at the time as needlessly long and graphic. The camera remained, unblinking, on this person's suffering, and the sound effects made it feel all too real. I wondered if the entire film had been building to this brutality, and felt cheated. In the moment, I couldn't imagine anything was possibly worth my sitting through such visceral torment.

In retrospect, it becomes apparent the the film was paving the way for its final, shocking twist. (If you are planning to see the movie and are still reading, seriously, stop now.) As we watch the boys torture their mother, our loyalties begin to shift away from the boys and toward the mother. Even if she is an impostor — a possibility that becomes more and more doubtful as the scene continues — it becomes impossible to justify the level of torment they're visiting upon this woman.

And then, after an ill-fated escape attempt on her part, the truth is revealed: The boys are actually just one boy, Elias. Lukas was killed in an accident before the events of the film, and he's been a figment of Elias' imagination the whole time we've been watching the film.

Fiala and Franz's construction of this twist is nothing short of masterful. Most movie twists rely on a bit of fudging or trickery on the filmmaker's part, and few offer more than a fun jolt. Goodnight Mommy 's twist changes our understanding of everything we've seen. And it does so entirely honestly. As we think back to fill in the gaps, it becomes apparent that Fiala and Franz have been telegraphing this twist all along.

Hints are woven in from the start. The film opens with a scene of the boys playing outside. Elias keeps calling out for Lukas, but never the other way around. Certain shots make it difficult to tell exactly how many boys are running around, while others obscure one twin behind the other. The mother's odd behavior, too, makes perfect sense in light of this revelation. She's reeling from the death of her son, and at a loss to deal with the fact that her other son is in deep denial.

To throw us off the track, the filmmakers expertly employ a series of red herrings including a dead cat, a disappearing mole, a strange old photograph. But even there, it's hard to cry foul. The fact that Elias is an unreliable narrator is quickly and firmly established, by way of violent, fantastical sequences that turn out to be nothing more than dreams or fantasies. All in all, it's one of the best constructed movie twists in recent memory.

And it's a twist that actually adds a layer of meaning to the film, rather than one that shocks for the sake of it. (Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with the latter. A silly twist can be great fun when done right.) The new information gives Goodnight Mommy an undercurrent of profound tragedy, turning it into something like The Babadoook — a story that initially appears to be about monstrous motherhood, but really turns out to be about grief.

Unfortunately, the emotional gut-punch is weakened somewhat by the fact that we simply don't know to be sad for this family until the last five or ten minutes of the film. It's possible the big spoiler makes the second viewing more heart-wrenching, but I can't say for certain, because I've been too scared to find out.

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Goodnight Mommy

2014, Horror/Mystery & thriller, 1h 40m

What to know

Critics Consensus

Dark, violent, and drenched in dread, Goodnight Mommy is perfect for extreme horror enthusiasts -- or filmgoers who prefer to watch between splayed fingers. Read critic reviews

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Goodnight mommy videos, goodnight mommy   photos.

Twin boys who do everything together, from collecting beetles to feeding stray cats, welcome their mother home after her reconstructive surgery. But with her face wrapped in bandages, and her demeanor distant, they grow suspicious of her identity.

Rating: R (Some Nudity|Disturbing Violent Content)

Genre: Horror, Mystery & thriller

Original Language: German

Director: Veronika Franz , Severin Fiala

Producer: Ulrich Seidl

Writer: Veronika Franz , Severin Fiala

Release Date (Theaters): Sep 11, 2015  limited

Release Date (Streaming): Mar 28, 2017

Box Office (Gross USA): $1.2M

Runtime: 1h 40m

Distributor: Radius TWC

Production Co: Ulrich Seidl Film Produktion GmbH

Cast & Crew

Susanne Wuest

Elias Schwarz

Lukas Schwarz

Hans Escher

Elfriede Schatz

Red Cross Collector No. 1

Karl Purker

Red Cross Collector No. 2

Georg Deliovsky

Pizza Delivery Guy

Christian Steindl

Christian Schatz

Erwin Schmalzbauer

Accordion God

Veronika Franz

Severin Fiala

Screenwriter

Ulrich Seidl

Martin Gschlacht

Cinematographer

Michael Palm

Film Editing

Olga Neuwirth

Original Music

Hubert Klausner

Production Design

Johannes Salat

News & Interviews for Goodnight Mommy

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Critic Reviews for Goodnight Mommy

Audience reviews for goodnight mommy.

To say that this movie is all kinds of fucked up would be the understatement of the year. I don't even know where I could even begin that would be an adequate point to start off this review. One of the things that is most impressive about this film is the fact that a large part of the film, and its horror, was improvised. Yet the film maintains a focus and narrative strength that makes it come across like it was as tightly-scripted as humanly possible, where every shot has a meaning, every line has a purpose and no motion is wasted. Eventually a script was written, but, according to Susanne Wuest, the mother, the kids playing Elias and Lukas, also named that in real life, never read it. It also appears as if they haven't seen the film, which might be for the best. Another thing I like about the movie is the fact that the movie keeps you guessing right up until the very end. You are never quite sure where they are heading and that makes the film a little more harrowing to experience. Let's just say that this isn't as straightforward a film as it appears to be. You could say that there is a twist, but, when you look at the film and you actually inspect the clues that were right there in the open, it makes perfect sense. It all fits within the context of the story the film is telling. The fact of the matter is that the twist makes the film even more disturbing and dark than it already is leading up to it. As far as psychological horror goes, this might be one of the best I've seen in a fairly long time. Particularly how there's even a certain innocence about what the twins are doing. Even as they're doing fairly horrific things to their mother, they're doing so out of the fact that they want to know where their 'real' mother is as this woman, who looks just like their mother, is acting like anything but. Perhaps even innocence is the wrong way to describe it, but it's the closest I can come to. I don't think it ever came into either Lukas' or Elias' mind that what they were doing was wrong. The film is deliberately paced, so I believe that will bother some people who aren't as patient so as to give the film a real shot before dismissing it as being 'too boring'. But, again, to me, even if the film was largely improvised, I think there's still a focus to it and I do think that everything the film shows you serves a purpose into how everything is going to wind up. It's never a boring movie, it's just a little more deliberate and one that will require some patience. Ultimately, however, this ends up being a real disturbing look at the innocence of these twins and what it drives them to do. The film is beautifully shot and the acting is really strong, all around, so there's also that. I can't really describe the third act in detail without really spoiling the movie, but let's just say that it goes to some really dark places. Overall, this movie is pretty damn great, no doubt about it. It's definitely not gonna be everyone's cup of tea, but I thought it was a great, dark and disturbing look into the mind of these twins. Gonna require some patience, but this one is gonna stick with you for a long time.

An extremely well made psychological horror with quality writing and many superb moments, especially in the bravura second half. There is a narrative twist and I did figure it out but this in no way lessoned the impact (indeed my predicted foreknowledge made for unbearably tense viewing). Susanne Wuest is brilliant as the titular mommy, expertly playing with audience sympathies throughout.

In this genre, what often separates the wheat from the chaff is the visual lexicon, that is - the discernible style of the director which is then boldly captured by the cinematographer. Here writers/directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala artfully flaunt a narrative that manifests anxiety. The dread is palpable. The fact that the ambiguous story is created without much clarification intensifies the air of disorientation. Granted there are a lot of red herrings that purposefully mislead the viewer in ways that don't always play fair. I still have no idea what that pizza delivery was about. But in a production such as this, the misdirection only heightens the unease. The script skillfully undermines the strength of the familial bonds we hold dear. I won't soon forget the experience. I just have one nagging question: Why are the Red Cross volunteers in Austria so aggressive? fastfilmreviews.com

Dark, atmospheric, and relentlessly unnerving, Goodnight Mommy is a psychologically lucid exploration of mental stability, trust, and family. Though never quite living up to its full potential as a horror film, Goodnight Mommy creates a highly unique and agitating ambiance with immense payoff in its final, climactic reveal. Not one to be overlooked by arthouse horror fans.

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Movie Review – Goodnight Mommy (2022)

December 23, 2022 by Robert Kojder

Goodnight Mommy , 2022.

Directed by Matt Sobel. Starring Naomi Watts, Cameron Crovetti, Nicholas Crovetti, Peter Hermann, Jeremy Bobb, and Crystal Lucas-Perry.

Twin brothers arrive at their mother’s house and suspect something isn’t right.

There’s nothing wrong with change in remakes, especially since the original version of Goodnight Mommy packs a devastating twist that shouldn’t be escalated to and redone shot for shot. Director Matt Sobel (alongside screenwriter Kyle Warren) has tinkered with the horrifying work from filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, all in ways for the worse that never allow this American adaptation to reach the psychologically disturbing heights or sinister vibe of its Austrian predecessor from 2014.

While I have not seen the original since its release, it feels like that here, the filmmakers are deliberately trying to give away the reveal, which has the potential to add depth for someone familiar with the source material. It doesn’t. What’s left is a movie that consistently and hilariously telegraphs its twist for an audience that shouldn’t know what’s coming.

The setup remains the same. Following a facial cosmetic surgery, a celebrity mother (played by Naomi Watts, who continues a rough streak of both bad movies and remakes) has her face covered in gauze but is healthy enough to once again look after her twin sibling children. The presumably separated father (a brief appearance by Jeremy Bobb) drops off Elias and Lucas (played by real-life brothers Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti) at the mom’s remote woodland home.

These children seem to be aged up by a few years from the original version, which hurts the story’s credibility and the rationality of the characters’ actions. Basically, Elias and Lucas increasingly become convinced that the woman under the gauze (which is nowhere near as freaky a visual this time around) is not their mom. The Mother exhibits strange behavior such as tossing away crayon family drawings, exclaiming to an unknown individual in privacy on the phone that she doesn’t know how much longer she can pretend, and responding to disobedience with hysteria and smacking one of the children across the face.

Lending plausibility to the brothers’ accusations is a headshot of the Mother with different colored eyes. Not only is this another one of the small changes on display, but it’s one that strongly neuters some of the terror; it’s a far cry from the possibility that the woman is an imposter that the boys know (in the original, they find a photograph of two identical looking women wearing the same outfit). The children, who have to be at least teenagers, also come across as somewhat dumb for not knowing what color-changing eye contacts are or Googling what could cause such a change in appearance.

There is also a scene around 40 minutes in that threatens to take the story in a completely new direction, complete with the CGI creature atrocity, that angered and nearly broke me into turning off the screener link (the only reason I didn’t is so I would still be able to review the movie). Cautiously on edge and nervous that Goodnight Mommy isn’t going to have the guts to go through with even half of the troubling and shocking chaos that the original builds to, at this point, I’m just trying to enjoy the performances and hoping for at least one thoughtful tweak to the story.

This iteration of Goodnight Mommy has no suspense, Naomi Watts is mostly terrible aside from the third act, the twin brothers look foolish and don’t get nearly enough opportunities to be chillingly cruel in their suspicions, and the ending has been retooled to send a halfhearted message on gun violence lazily. There is not a single reason to seek this version out. However, check out the original; it’s a sadistic and psychologically tormenting pleasure.

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★  / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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‘Goodnight Mommy’ Ending Explained: Naomi Watt’s Amazon Thriller Comes With a Wild Plot Twist

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Goodnight Mommy on Amazon Prime is a new psychological thriller that makes good use of the fact that both plastic surgery bandaids and identical twins are inherently creepy concepts.

Based on the 2014 Austrian movie of the same by filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, this 2022 American remake was helmed by director Matt Sobel and writer Kyle Warren. Naomi Watts stars in the lead role, a character known only as “Mother,” who spends the vast majority of the film with her face wrapped in gauze. Child actors and IRL twin brothers Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti star alongside her, as her twin sons who start to suspect Mother is not who she says she is.

If you don’t know the Goodnight Mommy plot twist from the 2014 movie, then you’re in for a wild ride. Read on for Decider’s breakdown of the 2022 Goodnight Mommy  remake.

Warning: Goodnight Mommy spoilers ahead. Obviously.

HOW SCARY IS GOODNIGHT MOMMY ?

Goodnight Mommy is more of a psychological thriller than it is a horror movie slasher, so it’s not that scary. It is not gory, bloody, or gross. Don’t expect any jumpscares or disturbing imagery—this is all about the slow build of mind games. That said, Goodnight Mommy is scary in the sense that it plays on the idea that you might not be able to trust those closest to you. If you’d like to know more, read on for the Goodnight Mommy  plot summary and the Goodnight Mommy ending, explained.

WHAT IS THE GOODNIGHT MOMMY PLOT SUMMARY?

Twin boys Elias and Lucas are sent to stay with their mother after a long separation. To their surprise, when they arrive, their mother’s face is completely covered by a facial bandage. She tells them that she’s recovering from cosmetic surgery. As if this isn’t strange enough, Mother’s behavior is erratic. She forbids them from going in certain parts of the house, forbids visitors, and insists the blinds stay closed, saying it’s needed for her recovery. She’s quick to anger, yells at the boys, and even manhandles them. She refuses to sing them their bedtime song.

The boys sneak into the forbidden barn and Elias finds a blood spot. Huh! Probably nothing! They are beginning to suspect this woman is not their mother, but their father isn’t answering their calls. When Mother finds out they tried to call Dad, she takes their (apparently shared) phone away and destroys it.

The boys manage to run away, and camp out in a neighbor’s barn. They are discovered by the police, and explain their situation. The police promise to take them “somewhere safe,” but instead take them back to Mother’s house. ACAB, am I right? When they arrive at the house, Mom has her bandaids off, and her face is exactly like their real mother’s face. Also, it turns out, Mother is some sort of famous actor, and the police officers are fans, so they don’t properly investigate the twins’ abuse allegations. As Elias and Lucas leave the room, Elias overhears Mother telling the police “how it happened.” She responds, “He was playing by the pool and must have slipped on some water.” She starts crying. “It’s terrifying, that line between reality and fantasy—it’s vanished.” The police respond that children imagine things, and insist it will pass.

Elias and Lucas still don’t believe this is their real mother, and instead, believe a stranger got facial reconstruction surgery. They duct-tape Mother to the bed and provide what they believe is proof: A headshot of their real mother with green eyes, while this woman’s eyes are blue. Mother insists she wears colored contacts for work and that her eyes have always been blue. Lucas wants to run, but Elias is determined to find out where their “real” mother is.  He douses her with cold water and demands to know where their real mother is.

Mother starts crying and begs Elias to believe her. Elias starts to doubt himself and looks for the supposed contacts, which Mother says are in her purse. Lucas gets to the purse first, and claims he doesn’t find any contacts. Lucas also insists they tape Mother’s mouth shut, to “keep her from lying.” But before the twins can run, the cops show up at the house. One of the officers suspects something is wrong and insists to Elias he can tell her anything. He doesn’t give up his brother—but he does find the colored contacts in Mother’s purse. He rushes to let Mother go.

WHAT IS THE GOODNIGHT MOMMY PLOT TWIST?

Elias runs to Mother’s arms, now convinced there is something wrong with Lucas. Mother brings Elias to the forbidden barn. He asks where Lucas is, and she tells him not to worry about it. Mother brings Elias up to the barn attic and forces him to look at the blood stain on the wall. Elias starts sobbing, refusing to look. Mother tells Elias that he was playing with a loaded gun and killed his brother. “This is real,” she insists. “Look at it. No more pretending.”

At this point, you can look back on the film and realize that the only times other people interacted with one of the twins, it was Elias and not Lucas. If you rewatch the film, you’ll also find Mother always gets angry at Elias, not Lucas, and seems to get especially angry when Elias mentions Lucas. You’ll always see that she only ever responds to Elias and that all of her dialogue addresses him. The implication is that Lucas was a hallucination invented by Elias’s brain as a coping mechanism for this extreme trauma. It explains why two boys would share one phone, and why “Lucas” is always the one who is mistrustful of Mother—because Lucas is actually a part of Elias’s brain that is trying to protect him from the trauma of facing what he’s done. It also explains why Mother was so distant with Elias. Rather than face the reality that his mother was angry with him, he concocted an elaborate fantasy to explain her new attitude.

WHAT IS THE GOODNIGHT MOMMY ENDING EXPLAINED?

Elias panics, sobbing, and pushes his mother off of the attic, killing her. Her lantern breaks and lights the barn on fire. Elias runs away, and vomits in the field. Then, as he watches the barn burn, Elias is approached by both Mother and Lucas, seemingly alive and intact. We can conclude that Elias truly did kill both Lucas and his mother, and now he is hallucinating both his mother and his brother. This new mother is loving and hugs Elias, further proving she is a hallucination—his real mother was angry with him for killing her son, which is why she was so distant and cruel.

With that bombshell, the movie ends. Phew! I’m never having kids.

• Ending Explained
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The Ending Of Goodnight Mommy Explained

"Goodnight Mommy" is the 2022 English-language remake of the 2014 Austrian horror film of the same name directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz. The remake takes a slightly different approach to the original's film distressing subject matter. It focuses more on a kind of twisted closure rather than the physical and mental strain that we can put ourselves and others through in order to make reality fit our own preferred perspective. This version of "Goodnight Mommy" doesn't have the same level of excruciating violence as the original, but instead maintains an oddly optimistic and deceptively upbeat tone to deliver its emotional yet sinister message.

Twin brothers Elias and Lukas (Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti) go to stay with their mother (Naomi Watts) following the fall out of her divorce from their father. Upon arriving at their country home, the boys are startled to find their mother has undergone surgery and is wearing a bandage that covers her entire face. They soon notice that their mother isn't acting like herself and begin to suspect that they are living with an imposter.

"Goodnight Mommy" raises questions about grief, mental health, and identity, all of which come to a head in its finale. So, here is the ending of "Goodnight Mommy" explained through the context of the film's underlying themes and story.

Warning: major spoilers ahead.

One happy family

The breaking of a family can be a difficult thing for anyone — especially a child — and "Goodnight Mommy" begins by showing Elias and Lukas as part of a happy, healthy family. Taking place shortly before the rest of the movie unfolds, the first scene is cell phone footage of Mother (also known as "Mommy") singing a pluralized rendition of "You Are My Sunshine" to her twin boys in bed. Things seem to be as wonderful as can be — until we cut to the story proper and learn that something bad has happened off camera, so this happy family isn't together anymore.

In the scene following this cell phone footage, we see Elias drawing a picture of his family while in the car, en route to see his mother. This moment is as important as the opening of the film, since it lets us know right off the bat that all Elias wants is for him and his brother Lukas to be happily reunited with Mother again. He spends the rest of the film in pursuit of this goal, although not in the way we initially suspect.

At first, it appears that the only way the boys can be happy again is to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding this person masquerading as their mother. However, once we reach the final act, the truth comes out and we understand that Elias can't be truly happy until he's able to embrace his delusions.

Mommy just needed a tune up

When the boys are greeted by their mother, they're immediately suspicious of her. Perhaps they expect that she will be waiting for them at the door with open arms, ready to give them both a giant hug. Instead, they arrive at a quiet house, where leftover food collects flies and a woman in a mask emerges from the shadows of Mother's bedroom. She explains that the mask is helping her heal from a medical procedure.

The boys don't understand why she would get surgery if she isn't sick, so she tells them that like an old car, she just needed a tune-up. It's revealed shortly after that Mother is an actress of some renown. Therefore, it makes sense that she would get some plastic surgery — especially if, as the dialogue insinuates, her career isn't in the best place right now.

Although that explains the bandages, it does nothing to excuse her short temper or her refusal to sing them to sleep the way we see her do at the beginning of the film. From the jump, the movie has us questioning the reality of things and using sleight of hand to distract us with one mystery, while a completely different one is being subtly unveiled.

Nightmares of the barn

For many horror films, (creepy) dream sequences can play an important role in getting closer to the truth. Since Mother is recovering and there's not much else to do, Elias and Lukas decide to explore the grounds around their home. They go outside and see an old barn standing alone in the field behind the house. The moment Elias sees it, his demeanor changes. We don't know why, but it's clearly very important to him. Mother tells him they're not allowed in the barn, but they head in there anyway.

Elias doesn't like what he finds. Other than a pile of toys and comics, something that looks like dark smears of blood can be seen on the wall. When Mother discovers he's been in the barn, she forbids him from going outside, which leads to Elias dreaming about the barn. As the camera pushes in over the tall grass, the light of a fire reveals a hunched human form.

It turns out that these are more than dreams: They're memories. Some time ago, Elias and Lukas were playing in the barn and Elias had a gun that he didn't know was loaded, which accidentally went off and ended Lukas' life. The Lukas we've been seeing isn't real but rather, he is a manifestation of Elias' inability to accept what he did. When he's awake, Elias can ignore the truth. But when he sleeps, the truth comes looking for him.

Why didn't the police help?

If the police officers who show up in a horror film were good at their job, the movie would be over in 20 minutes. Therefore, it's important to make sure that they're either bumbling idiots, get killed off, or are secretly evil themselves. Although, that's not really the case with either Sandy (Crystal Lucas-Perry) or Gary (Jeremy Bobb), the two officers who find Elias hiding out in a neighbor's house.

Since their scene comes in the middle of the movie, it isn't surprising that they don't wind up saving the day. What's shocking though is that they mislead the boys into thinking they're helping them, only to take them back home. At this point of the film, we don't know Lukas is dead and that Mother truly is their mother. So, it seems strange that the police would take these boys back to a woman they're so blatantly scared of.

However, once the ending reveals the truth, these scenes make sense. These cops probably know about Lukas' death and understand that things must be difficult at home. When they have a chat with Mother (most of which we don't see), she probably explained that Elias isn't coping well with Lukas' death and has been pretending that he's is still alive. So, although their actions may make us want to pull our hair out, they truly thought they were doing what was best for Elias.

Tired of pretending

"Goodnight Mommy" is filled with misdirections, whose meanings become clearer at the end of the film when the truth of Lukas' death is revealed. One such moment is when Elias overhears Mother talking to an unknown person on the telephone. She tells this person that "he knows something is wrong" and that she is tired of pretending. The first watch of this scene only further legitimizes the idea that she is an imposter: Elias knows that something is wrong because she's pretending to be his mother and she's tired of it. 

Once Elias is forced to confront the fact that he accidentally killed his brother, our understanding of that conversation shifts. The subject is still Elias, but the "something wrong" he senses isn't that she's a stranger; it's that Mother is struggling to keep up this charade. She's tired of pretending because she needs to move on from this — she needs to try and reassemble a normal life.

That could be another reason she got the surgery: to get back to work and do her best to make peace with the loss of one of her sons. Elias, though, is nowhere near ready to stop pretending. In fact, based on the way he lashes out when Mother shows him the truth, pretending may be the only thing keeping him alive.

We'll never be alone

As Elias and Lukas become more convinced that Mother isn't who she says she is, they decide to flee from the house in the middle of the night. It's pouring rain and they come across an empty house. With no other option for shelter, the brothers break in and build a blanket fort the rest under for the night. The utter silence is too much for Elias to bear, so he asks his brother to tell him a story. Lukas does so, but with a strange twist that makes us question his character for the first time.

He tells Elias that when they were first conceived, they were a single entity. Then, because they were smart, they split into two, so they would never have to be alone. It sounds like Lukas is way too attached to his sibling and may be manipulating him because he thinks their mother is trying to keep them apart. He even says as much later in the film, when he gets caught in a lie.

In hindsight, though, we understand this is Elias' own delusion. He is comforting himself, assuring himself that his brother isn't dead because they're twins and twins can never be alone. It is also a subconscious tactic to frame his mother as the enemy because she is trying to make him accept what happened. If she thinks life would be better in a world without Lukas then she must be a villain.

Before getting into the final story beats of the film, it's important to streamline a few things that we've already discussed to clarify the context. The first important detail to remember is that this was once a wonderfully happy family. Then, tragedy struck in the form of a horrible accident: Elias mistakenly shot his brother Lukas in the barn behind their house and killed him.

The incident causes a rift in the family. Elias can't accept what he did, so his mind reverts to a time before the accident when Lukas was still alive. We don't know if the divorce causes Elias to drown in denial, or if his choice to imagine Lukas never died is what leads to the divorce. Either way, it's safe to say that having one parent willing to let their kid act out their grief in their own time and one who wants no part of this fantasy likely puts a strain on the relationship.

Elias is so set on keeping Lukas alive in his mind that when his mother starts acting cold, distant, and abusive towards him, he imagines that she is a stranger, who has replaced his formerly loving, gentle mother. His inability to admit that his brother is gone makes him view his mother as an enemy that has to be stopped. This is why Lukas is seen as the manipulative sibling: He represents the world as Elias wants it to be, while Mother represents reality.

Let the truth burn

In the last act of the film, Elias gets fed up with this woman pretending to be his mother, so he decides to get the truth out of her by any means. He ties her to the bed and demands to know what she did with their mother. When she refuses to admit her ruse, he douses her with ice water. Part of the reason he thinks she's an imposter is that her eyes are blue, while photos of his mother show her with green eyes. She explains that she wears contacts for work and even tells him that he can find them in her purse.

Lukas claims they aren't in her bag, but when Elias looks, he finds them, and he's suddenly frightened of his brother. Looking for answers, he cuts his mother loose and she takes him to the barn. This is when she explains what happened. Suddenly, Elias' dreams make sense to him: The figure in the barn is his mother, hunched over the lifeless body of his brother Lukas.

Mother tries to tell him it wasn't his fault and it will be okay, but he can't hear it. He lashes out, knocking her off the loft. She dies when she hits the ground and the lantern she carried with her breaks. The flames quickly grab hold of the straw, filling the barn. Before we know it, Elias is running away from an inferno as the barn — and the evidence within — burns. He has finally killed the truth he's been so desperate to be rid of.

Protecting yourself

As the barn burns, Elias is greeted by his mother and Lukas: They're both unharmed and stand in the field. Mother tells him he did nothing wrong and he hugs her, grateful to see that she's alive. This is the perfect version of his mother, the one he expected to find several days ago when he and Lukas first showed up: the one who used to sing him to sleep. It's further evidence that Elias is not ready for the truth.

At least he's reunited with Elias and his mother, just as he wanted at the start of the film. What's so troubling about this is that it feels human. This isn't some supernatural world where ghosts can come and go; it's a case of human beings distorting their understanding of reality to make the world a more comforting place to live. Elias is just a boy, who has been asked to confront actions that resulted in the deaths of two people he loves very much.

There is an optimism to this ending that is troubling. Elias' self-deception has been so effective that even as he watches the barn burn, he can still imagine that his mother was never harmed. He has gotten so good at protecting himself from heartbreak, that even now he is able to live a lie because it's safer than the truth. On the one hand, Elias will be fine because he can never be separated from his mother and Lukas. On the other hand, it is likely that he will never be okay again.

A less torturous ending

"Goodnight Mommy" adheres rather closely to the 2014 original in a lot of respects. Structurally, it is nearly identical, while the story's twist is the same, and the cinematography is occasionally very similar. The major difference is tone. While the remake has plenty of disturbing moments of its own, the original film is much colder, harsher, and meaner.

Look no further than the ending of the original. Elias and Lukas don't use borderline torture tactics to get information from their mother: They flat-out brutalize her. We won't go into specifics here, but they abuse their mother in horrific, agonizing ways that are truly difficult to watch. Not only that, but Elias intentionally sets his mother on fire and watches her scream in pain, as the flames take her life.

The final image of the Austrian film is of Elias, Mother, and Lukas standing together in a field, looking directly into camera, as if they're waiting for someone to take a picture. It is a sinister moment that mocks the concept of a happy family and dares the audience to make peace with what they've just witnessed. The intention here seems to be to expose the cruelty of self-deception, while the remake is more ambivalent about the subject.

The power of ambiguity

When taken literally, everything we've written here encapsulates the ending of "Goodnight Mommy." However, filmmaking is an art form, and art is always open to interpretation. Although all the evidence we've mentioned supports the narrative that Elias has been intentionally lying to himself to survive, the movie never definitively states that this is the case.

Sure, that's probably what's going on, but it doesn't mean it is 100% accurate. What if this was all an elaborate scheme orchestrated by Mother to manipulate her children into staying loyal to her instead of their father? After all, there is a scene at the start of the film where the father mentions that Mother won't want to see him. When Mother discovers her children have been contacting their father, she absolutely loses it and destroys their phone. Maybe she really does want them all to herself.

That's the wonderful thing about an ambiguous ending : Each viewer can take something away from a film based on their own personal worldview and experiences. This is just one reading of the film. However, it's important to remember the dance the movie does with reality and fiction. At the end of the day, it's up to the viewer to decide what they believe to be truth.

Goodnight Mommy Review: Naomi Watts' Sleepy Horror Remake

Naomi Watts is great as usual in the unfortunately unnecessary remake Goodnight Mommy, a horror movie that lacks the bite of the original.

Naomi Watts headlined what is perhaps the greatest American remake of an international horror with the 2002 Gore Verbinski film The Ring . That cold classic took the then-original idea of its Japanese predecessor and updated it with a wholly original, genuinely creepy film filled with gorgeous, icy visuals and a wonderfully grand Hans Zimmer score. The film was a huge hit worldwide, earing $250 million (that's $411 million adjusted for inflation) to become one of the highest-grossing horror films at the time, and Watts was crucial for its success.

Two decades and a bevy of American horror remakes later, Watts is starring in the Prime Video adaptation of a 2014 German film, Ich Seh, Ich Seh. If The Ring was a great example of how to remake a 'foreign' film for a worldwide audience, Goodnight Mommy is largely an example of how not to, diluting the brilliance of the original into an easily swallowed consumer product. The acting is excellent and the direction and cinematography are capable, but the end result is tame and tired.

Someone is Impersonating Mother in Goodnight Mommy

Goodnight Mommy has a minimalist plot and setting, and has essentially taken every detail from the original but translated it by way of dictionaries and disappointment. The film follows a pair of young twins who are dropped off to stay with their mother after a period of unexplained absence. The boys, Elias and Lucas (even their names are the same in this American remake), used to have a close relationship with their mother, who would sing You Are My Sunshine to them at bedtime every night. Now, she is distant, terse, and aggressive.

Exacerbating this is the mask-like surgical bandages worn by the woman (credited only as Mother). Slits for orifices expose her lips, nostrils, and eyes, with the rest of her face obfuscated by the white gauze of the mask. She's an actress, or perhaps she was an actress; Mother has gotten plastic surgery of some kind, perhaps hoping to reclaim her status as a star with a smoother, stretched face. She walks around the expansive house in her silk nightgown, looking like Christiane from Eyes Without a Face .

Related: Best Movies Coming to Amazon Prime Video in September 2022

Between the mask and her behavior, along with a curious evening in which she refuses to sing You Are My Sunshine , the boys begin to suspect that she isn't their mother at all. They sneak around the large house, eavesdropping on phone conversations where Mother whispers worrying words like, "I'm tired of pretending," and they tip-toe into forbidden areas, strangely designated as off-limits by Mother. They worry more and more that this is not Mother, and that she's getting dangerous.

Goodnight Mommy is About the Capgras Delusion

The idea of loved ones and formerly familiar faces not actually being themselves, and somehow being replaced, has been called the Capgras syndrome for one century, ever since psychiatrist Joseph Capgras coined the term in 1923. It's a delusional misidentification syndrome that has a lot of philosophical and dramatic weight and has been used in everything from the four Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies to Star Wars (in the Fate of the Jedi series of books).

The Capgras delusion is a haunting narrative device that can serve many purposes, and it's used in Goodnight Mommy to portray the sad distance and uncertainty that forms between parents and children as they age, and between people terrorized by trauma. Like many children who haven't come of age, Elias and Lucas don't yet understand how a parent can become cold, bitter, and cruel, so it makes more sense to imagine that there's an imposter beneath the bandages. Then again, when she destroys their phone in the garbage disposal and charges at their door with a crowbar, maybe they're right.

A Tame, PG Remake of a Disturbing Horror Movie

The original Austrian film visualized the Capgras delusion with a much colder, emotionless aesthetic reminiscent of some Michael Haneke films and the work of Ulrich Seidl (a producer on the film and the husband to one of its directors, who is himself embroiled in a scandal ). Its hyper-modern architecture and use of white felt threatening, and its descent into utter horror was raw and disarming.

The director of this remake, Matt Sobel, has lost much of the disturbing detachment of the original film in attempting to make it more palatable for the American market. Though he frames some nice compositions and creates some good dolly shots, the aesthetic is much less haunting here, which only makes the film's dilution of the original horrors that much weaker. Sobel's work on Brand New Cherry Flavor is riveting in comparison.

While the original Goodnight Mommy was glacial in its initial pacing, it became surprisingly dark, graphic, and intense in a manner many compared to the New French Extremity movement . The new Goodnight Mommy is essentially a PG retelling of the original, and while that might open it up to more audiences, it completely shatters the shock and suspense. Where the Austrian film had considerable bite, Sobel's film merely chews.

There are countless great horror films that aren't rated R (coincidentally, The Ring is one of them, along with Insidious, Drag Me to Hell, Jaws , and Ouija: Origin of Evil ), but Goodnight Mommy only really works if taken to its chilling extreme, something this remake resolutely refuses to do. There are plenty of spoilers in Goodnight Mommy that shouldn't be broached, but suffice it to say, the American remake removes much of the disturbing fright of these revelations.

Naomi Watts and the Crovetti Brothers Are Great in a Weak Film

The young brothers Nicholas and Cameron Crovetti are very good as Lucas and Elias, respectively. They've both done great work in Big Little Lies , Cameron has been excellent in The Boys , and Nicholas is starring in the highly-anticipated remake of Salem's Lot , and their talent and natural chemistry is obvious here. However, their charm and warmth doesn't necessarily fit with what Goodnight Mommy attempts to do; like the rest of the film, they needed more of an edge.

Related: The Best Naomi Watts Movies, Ranked

Naomi Watts is excellent, of course, but that's hardly a surprise. When David Lynch helped her rise to stardom by casting her as the lead in the great film Mulholland Drive , he told The Los Angeles Times , "I saw someone that I felt had a tremendous talent, and I saw someone who had a beautiful soul, an intelligence — possibilities for a lot of different roles, so it was a beautiful full package."

Like Ethan Hawke in the recent film The Black Phone , Watts is able to express herself and be intimidating even with her face obscured throughout many scenes. She uses her body and her voice masterfully, as she always does, and is the best reason to watch Goodnight Mommy . While Susanne Wuest was great, watching this American version makes one wish that Watts could go back in time and star in the original film.

Goodnight Mommy and the Inferior Remake Are Available Now

These are, for the most part, the only three actors in Goodnight Mommy , give or take two police officers (Crystal Lucas-Perry and the forehead king of Russian Doll , Jeremy Bobb). As such, the film is a kind of chamber drama and not the type of thing most American audiences really go for, so it's odd that they'd tone the viciousness down so much with the remake. Without the menace and intensity of the original, it's simply sleepy.

A remake doesn't have to be compared to the original film, and doesn't need to replicate it in order to work; The Ring showed this well. Then again, if a film takes the exact same plot, setting, and characters (without even renaming them) as another movie, then it better do it very well and add something special. Otherwise, comparisons are obligatory — when a store's generic product is the exact replica of a brand name, they feature the word "compare to" in order to indicate what they're replicating, and it feels the exact same way with Goodnight Mommy . In conversations, the saying goes, 'If you're not going to say anything nice, don't say anything at all.' In the world of remakes, perhaps the axiom should be, 'If you're not going to make anything new, don't make anything at all.'

While viewers would be advised to seek out the original 2014 film (streaming on Tubi and Vudu), Goodnight Mommy is now streaming on Prime Video from Animal Kingdom, Playtime, and Amazon Studios.

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Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead review – a worthwhile comedy remake

The Christina Applegate-led dark comedy from the 90s gets a shrewdly made update that acts as a blueprint for how Hollywood should revisit older material

D on’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead is the ultimate ode to the latchkey generation. To watch the 1991 film now is to be reminded of a simpler time when parents barely checked in, house parties were all the rage and Christina Applegate was the ideal girl nextdoor. Given its place in the grand tradition of coming-of-age classics, somewhere between Tom Hanks’s Big and Jennifer Garner’s 13 Going on 30, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood mulled a remake of Applegate’s celluloid breakout. Any update would have to relate to a new generation that, in many ways, has had to grow up even faster than their predecessors.

The reboot, which comes courtesy of Paramount streamer BET+, doesn’t just understand this assignment; it nails it. The new film echoes the wit and charm of the original with a major twist: now the black comedy focuses on a Black family in southern California. Other details from the first film are shuffled around and some supplemental characters axed. But for the most part writer Chuck Hayward is faithful to the source material written by Neil Landau and Tara Ison – both of whom receive story bylines and serve as executive producers alongside Tyra Banks. Their film, helmed by Wade Allain-Marcus in his studio directorial debut, is a model for how future reboots can be faithfully done.

In this second draft, it’s Tanya Crandell – a college-bound 17-year-old played earnestly by Bel Air’s Simone Joy Jones – who sees her Spanish holiday plans torpedoed when her widowed mother (the off-color standup comic Patricia “Ms Pat” Williams) suffers a nervous breakdown at the office and seizes Tanya’s vacation funds to float a medically mandated yoga getaway in Thailand. Nonagenarian Ms Sturak (Oscar nominee June Squibb) lands the job of watching Tanya and her siblings: Kenny, the burnout (Danielle T Hansley Jr); Melissa, the goth (Ayaamii Sledge); and Zack, the naïf (Carter Young). But it isn’t long before Ms Sturak drops the sweet granny act and reverts to her true form: a racist old Karen who rouses the kids with a pistol because “she watched Madea movies”.

When Ms Sturk winds up kicking the bucket – felled by either her shock reaction to a rager Kenny throws at the house or an antihistamine overdose, it’s not clear which – the kids don’t grieve. Instead, they hatch a plan to dispose of the body. They’re nearly caught when an errant 911 call brings a cop to their driveway as they’re stuffing the old bag into a garage fridge.

This is one of the many earned moments where the film considers how the story would be different if it were Black latchkey kids conspiring in an involuntary manslaughter. But instead of a discursive, Kenya Barris-style Black history lesson, it’s enough for Kenny to name-drop the sheriff (a former lacrosse coach) to get out of the jam before berating his siblings for taking their fragile freedom entirely too lightly. (“He ain’t even believe we live here!” Kenny says of the cop, who couldn’t help sizing up their big house.) Points on fast fashion, food insecurity, toxic masculinity and college nostalgia are just as shrewdly made. If anything in the script grates, it’s the overreliance on the N-word – which is no doubt played a role in the film’s rating jumping from PG-13 to a hard R.

Ultimately, the kids dump Ms Sturak’s body in a nearby lake with her car and also the money their mom set aside for them to live off of. To make ends meet, the younger siblings push Tanya into the workforce; on the strength of Melissa and Jack’s forgery skills, Tanya lands a job in a fading fashion brand run by a relentlessly sunny girlboss named Rose – played to perfection by 2000s reality queen Nicole Richie. “The bug up her ass lives on the stick up her ass,” she says of Caroline (Will Trent’s Iantha Richardson), the vengeful staffer Rose overtakes for the dream job. “And her neighbors to the north are the chip on her shoulder.”

Where the Caroline character was more active in undermining Applegate’s Sue Ellen Crandell, in the 99-minute reboot, she makes more time for Gus (Jermaine Fowler), Rose’s f-boy paramour, and Bryan (Miles Fowler), Tanya’s crush. The attention allotted to the development of all characters, not just the primary Crandell child, is one area where the reboot improves on the Stephen Herek-directed prototype. Others are the clothes, colors and cinematography – and together they imbue the film with an airy spirit that harkens to the HBO series Insecure, where Allain-Marcus gained fame as lonely man of reason Derek DuBois. All the while, the reboot calls back to the 90s version through cameos (no spoilers) and pullquotes (“I’m right on top of that, Rose!), the transitions punctuated by a carefree soundtrack that whipsaws from Curtis Mayfield to Libra Jolie. Allain-Marcus even set the new family inside the same Santa Clarita house the Caucasian Crandells called home.

Because of so much Hollywood groupthink, the reboot has become synonymous with a specific kind of studio flex – a project for the sake of itself and the bottom line. But Don’t Tell Mom is a justifiably sweet feat that makes latchkey kids across the generations feel seen. Refreshingly, it represents real growth for an industry that would much rather be left to its own devices.

Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead is out in US cinemas on 12 April with a UK date to be announced

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Don’t tell mom the babysitter’s dead review: this decent, fun remake can’t beat the original's charm.

The lighthearted revamp of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead doesn’t quite match the charm or appeal of the original cult classic.

• The remake of Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead successfully balances old and new elements.
• Important themes and characters from the original are not fully utilized in the remake.
• Those familiar with the 1991 film will appreciate the nostalgia and callbacks, but the remake may fall short for new viewers.

Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead , the 2024 remake of the beloved 1991 cult classic comedy, attempts to bring the quirky charm of the original to a new generation. Starring Simone Joy Jones, Jermaine Fowler, and Nicole Richie, this modern revisioning aims to capture the lighthearted spirit that made the Christina Applegate-led film a fan favorite. While the remake offers a fun, nostalgic moment for fans of this forgotten 1990s kids’ movie , it struggles to enhance or elevate the brilliant charm that made its predecessor so memorable.

A group of siblings are forced to reckon with the sudden death of their elderly babysitter. Shortly after their mother heads off on a personal vacation, the siblings discover they’ll have the place to themselves - but they’ll have to keep the secret until their mother comes home.

• The modern remake is fun so long as it's not taken too seriously
• Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead captures the overall spirit of the original
• The film misses the mark when it comes to the charm & sensibilities of the original
• The remake's characters don't have as much of a driving force

The film's strength lies in its ability to reference the 1991 version. However, for those seeking a truly satisfying comedic experience, rewatching the original may prove to be a more rewarding choice. The remake's reliance on our suspension of disbelief, coupled with its inability to fully capture the magic of the simpler times of the early '90s, makes it a less compelling standalone film. While Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead provides a feel-good experience for those in the mood for a bit of absurdity, it falls short of surpassing the original's enduring appeal.

Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead Delivers A Perfect Balance Of Old & New

The remake does a good job at referencing the original, while making it its own.

This fun, but unnecessary remake manages to strike the perfect balance between paying homage to the original and introducing fresh elements for a new generation. Shot in the same house used in the original, a fun nostalgic callback, the film maintains originality while infusing updated elements and scenarios for a more streamlined narrative. For instance, the youngest sibling from the original, Walter, is merged with the character of Zach, and the younger sister, Melissa, is a tech genius who helps create Tanya’s new identity. The movie incorporates enough modern touches without overdoing it, emphasizing the timeless nature of the premise.

Many will be excited to find that some of the most iconic quotes from the 1991 version are cleverly woven into this updated script.

Significant efforts have been taken to provide a more detailed and somewhat convincing explanation for the mother's long absence. While the original seemed to suggest she was simply spending time with a boyfriend, the remake offers a more nuanced backstory, with the mother experiencing a nervous breakdown after a mishap at work. Sure, there could have been more plausible reasons explored for a parent needing to travel abroad for an entire summer without her children, but the original element of absurdity remains, continuing the charm and silliness of the 1991 classic.

Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead truly succeeds in catering to fans of the original, showcasing a strength that shouldn't be overlooked when it comes to the art of the remake. Many will be excited to find that some of the most iconic quotes from the 1991 version are cleverly woven into this updated script, such as " I'm right on top of that, Rose " and " The dishes are done, man. ” These callbacks serve as a fun nod to the film's roots while seamlessly incorporating an updated narrative.

Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead (2024)

The best parts of the original don’t tell mom the babysitter’s dead are afterthoughts in the remake, important themes and characters aren’t utilized to their full potential.

While the remake of Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead does a decent job at paying homage to the original, it falls short in capturing the essence of some of the most beloved aspects of the 1991 film. One of the most notable disappointments is the portrayal of Rose, a standout in the original. Originally played by Joanna Cassidy, Rose Lindsey was kind, lighthearted, and made adulthood seem fun and glamorous, essentially serving as a role model for the young protagonist.

Nicole Richie, who was tasked with filling these big shoes, delivers a decent performance, but ultimately fails to fully embody the spirit of the original Rose. Despite her efforts, Richie's acting often feels forced, and it becomes apparent that she may not have thoroughly studied Cassidy's portrayal in the original film, nor truly made the role her own. However, a brief, but great and fun cameo from Cassidy provides a glimmer of forgiveness for Richie's shortcomings, but it's not enough to completely compensate for the lack of depth in her performance.

Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead can definitely be an enjoyable, quick watch for those who are willing to suspend disbelief and have prior knowledge of the original film.

Another crucial element that feels like an afterthought in the remake is Tanya's passion for fashion. In the original, fashion was a central theme, with Applegate’s character, Sue Ellen, possessing a love for it that was a driving force behind her actions and decisions, particularly her pursuit of a job at a fashion company. Her dedication to fashion was palpable, and it served as a defining characteristic that made her relatable and endearing. However, in the remake, fashion takes a backseat, feeling more like a superficial addition rather than an integral part of Tanya's character.

Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead can definitely be an enjoyable, quick watch for those who are willing to suspend disbelief and have prior knowledge of the original film. The modern updates and callbacks to the original provide a sense of nostalgia for fans of the 1991 version. However, for those unfamiliar with the source material or expecting a more substantial update, the remake may feel more like a made-for-TV movie better suited as background noise. While it's a valiant effort, the remake fails to deliver the same level of charm, humor, and heart that made the original so memorable.

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead will release in theaters on April 12, and will be available to stream on BET+ on May 16.