#WATCH GOODNIGHT MOMMY IN ENGLISH SKIN#
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Understandably, the tension in the house ratchets up as well. The more she not only withdraws, but acts frostily towards and Elias and downright ignores Lukas, the more that the boys’ suspicions are raised.

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Keenly observant and curious - and fostering a fondness towards the grotesque, as their big tank full of giant beetles and their eagerness to explore catacombs filled with skulls both demonstrate - Elias and Lukas immediately think that something is amiss with their mom. Although she prefers to keep her distance from the two boys, saying that she needs her rest, when she does interact with Elias and Lukas, she clearly favors the former over the latter. While her strapped-up face is visibly disconcerting, including to her two sons, that’s not all that’s off-putting. Looking like a cross between The Invisible Man circa 1933 and Eyes Without a Face’s mask-wearing Christiane, she’s an instantly perturbing figure. And so it is that their mother (Susanne Wuest) comes home, returning after a medical procedure that has left her face completely bandaged. Its next sights, of Elias and his twin brother Lukas (Lukas Schwarz) playing happily in the fields and water surrounding their Austrian countryside home, also have the same flavor.

When Goodnight Mommy begins with happy faces singing Brahms’ ‘Guten Abend, gute Nacht’ - nine-year-old Elias’ (Elias Schwarz) favorite song, we later learn - it introduces an idyllic picture that’s set to be subverted. In fact, the filmmaking duo want their viewers to recognize how this situation usually plays out, all so they can add their own spin. Indeed, Franz and Fiala know exactly which terrain they’re entering. It’s easy to find more examples, with Goodnight Mommy slotting into this busy subgenre perfectly.

#WATCH GOODNIGHT MOMMY IN ENGLISH SKIN#

What is The Shining if not a tale of a woman and her son trying to cope with their husband and father’s descent into madness? What is Robert Eggers’ recent standout The Witch but a chronicle of a family letting their fears and folklore tear at their kinship - and what is Ari Aster’s Hereditary if not an account of how you can always hurt the ones you love? Psycho’s traumatic mother-son relationship, The Innocents’ possessed children and The Omen’s son of Satan all carve up the idyllic picture of familial contentment, as does The Babadook, focusing on fraught widow who’s jumping out of her skin as much at her attention-seeking son as the pop-up book boogeyman he’s frightened of.

After all, what is gothic horror’s most iconic figure, and one of its most emulated - aka Frankenstein’s monster - but a creation rejected by its father-like creator? Family-focused horror-comedies such as The Addams Family and The Munstershave shown that the macabre and the supportive aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, but horror’s most unnerving family tales hack away at the bonds of blood. Great horror has always stuck to the basics, probing mortality and security, and this notion contemplates both existential topics - pondering what would happen if, instead of nurturing and caring for you from the moment they brought you into this world, your relatives represented the opposite extreme. It’s an idea that’s so baked into the horror genre, it’s as common as haunted houses and vengeful spirits: rather than being a wellspring of comfort and safety, one’s family can incite scares, terror and worse. Both have a literal air that’s tied to the movie’s secrets - but only one stresses how important family is to this savage and suspenseful psychological horror film, and nods to the feature’s canny way of toying with a fundamental horror trope. Ich seh, Ich sehis a perfectly fine moniker, with the German phrase translating to “I see, I see” however the English-language title of Goodnight Mommy is far superior. That said, instead of being saddled with an overly literal and laughable new name, the Austrian duo’s’ first film benefits from its new title. Such titles are a common occurrence, as well as a commonly discussed occurrence - so the fact that Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s debut feature has two monikers is hardly out of the ordinary. Just as lengthy: the number of listicles noting how Boogie Nights is called His Great Device Makes Him Famousin China, and Jaws goes by The Teeth of the Sea in France. Long is the list of films with titles that, upon their international release, have become lost in translation.

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