Goodnight Mommy (2014) | 100 Movies Bucket List

I saw the 2022 remake of this film a couple of years ago. So even though I hadn't seen this film, I didn't go into it blind, which would have been really interesting.

I liked this film.

I'm actually sad that I saw the remake before seeing this one, not least because it made the plot feel really obvious, almost like I would have guessed it right away if I didn't already know.

The actors are great. The boys who play Lukas and Elias (Lukas and Elias Schwarz) are amazing. I have no idea how old they were when they made the film but they did a great job, and Susanne Wuest who played their mother was also brilliant.

The audience doesn't really get much to go on while watching this film. We don't know anything about these people, we don't get to understand their lives prior to these events and we don't understand who they are until the end of the film.

Ordinarily, this would be a bad thing, but I think it works so well here. We're forced into this strange situation, we take everything at face value, and that makes the surprises that much more impactful (even if we already know what they are).

It explores a lot of interesting themes, the most obvious of which are the different family bonds and the way this manifests between the characters. The closeness of the brothers juxtaposed with the supposed cruelness of the mother makes this a fascinating character study outside of the turns it takes.

I really like the story itself, which was one of the reasons I was so glad to see this on the bucket list. As far as twists and turns go, this one has been done so many times because it works really well and always manages to change everything you thought you knew. When the ending of a film makes you want to go back to the beginning and watch again, you know it's great.

It gets darker and more disturbing towards the end, and definitely becomes harder to watch. Part of me wishes the reveal had come quicker, but I liked the exploration into the true horror of the situation, and finding out exactly who these people are.

Based on how much I like the plot, I understand why a remake was made, but in comparing the two films a remake was completely unnecessary because the remake is nowhere near as good as the original.