****SPOILERS****
Goodnight Mommy (2014)
With one of the most genuinely frightening trailers I've seen in a long time and a distinctly Michael Haneke-style atmosphere, I had high hopes for
Goodnight Mommy, and it was a little disappointing but not a complete misfire.
Goodnight Mommy is an Austrian film about two twin boys who move back home with their mother after she finishes an intense cosmetic surgery. Unusually distant and abusive and wrapped up in bandages that completely cover her face, the boys start to suspect that it's not their mother underneath those bandages. The trailer makes it seem like a terrifying, subversive psychological horror film, but it's horribly misleading.
Goodnight Mommy is instead a somber tale of grief and depression. I would be able to forgive that if it didn't descend into a nonsensical torture porn flick in the final act. The entire film, we're supposed to be lead to believe that this woman is not the boys' mother, but there is nothing substantial to make the viewer truly doubt her credibility. The boys just kinda figure that the woman isn't their mother and then start torturing her. The torture felt undeserved. It wasn't disturbing so much as it was just ugly to watch. There's also a plot twist where we realize that one of the boys is actually dead. It's pretty obvious from the first 15 minutes because the mother never interacts with one of the twins, and the dead twin has to whisper what he wants to say to the other boy so that he can say it. The thing that really frustrates me about this movie is how technically well made it is because I can't decide if this is a truly good movie or not. Even though the execution misses the mark, the direction, acting, cinematography and score are incredible. I'm not sure if I really liked this movie or not.
This might be something that I revisit in the future.