Goodnight Mommy is definitely, without one doubt, my FAVORITE horror movie of the year. Itâs not unlike the first hill of a roller coasterâoh, how the tension builds as you climb and climb, higher and higher, knowing youâre about to face something terrifying when you finally get to the top. You wiggle in your seat, and the loss of control in whatâs happening to you creates an almost unbearable sense of dread that makes your skin prickle, your stomach fill with butterflies, and your heartâthe only muscle thatâs REALLY keeping your fragile body aliveâspeeds up and starts thumping too hard inside of your chest.
After the roller coaster crestsâyou just fall. Some people scream. Some people (this would be me) let their mouth hang wide open in pure disbelief. Some want to get off that terrible fucking rideâthey just want it all to end. In the case of Goodnight Mommy, at moment the slow-creeping plot reaches its peak, several people jumped up from their seats and exited the theater. They couldnât scream or endure ANY longer the ride that Austrian writer-director team Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala had put them on. Though there isnât a gratuitous amount of blood or violence in this film (it leans more toward the âthrillerâ genre versus âhorrorâ), the physical brutality that is presented on-screen is extreme and personalâsomehow giving it a sharpness that cuts too deep for some viewers.
There are also excellent twists, so I donât want to tell you any more than you can glean from watching the trailer. Iâll just say that Goodnight Mommy is a movie about a pair of twin boys and their surgically-altered motherâa movie that begins with a sugary sweet rendition of Brahmsâs âCradle Songâ and ends with a tragedy that would make dusty old William Shakespeare himself roll in (or rise from) his grave. This said, itâs not a ride for the faint of heartâespecially those who are parents or âmommiesâ themselves. 
