Goodnight Mommy (2015), R, ★★★1/2

Mommy?!?

This is a short review.

I do not want to share a medium-sized review because there's so much going on in this little film from Austria that leaves so much imagination into the mind of a horror fanatic. A great theory would bring upon a child's mind is how long have you known your mother? Well, it is an attraction and also sort of a reflex as there is a mental relationship between mother and baby, more likely that the mother has to take care of the baby using her instincts to protect from other strangers. But, this movie challenges the children as if their mother is the stranger. Or is it really their mother?

A mother (Susanne Wuest) has undergone facial surgery and she returns to her isolated, modern house with her ten-year-old twins, Elias and Lukas (Elias and Lukas Schwarz). Her head and body is covered with bandages except her eyes and mouth. The twins are uncomfortable with their mother's appearance and they notice her strange behavior. Even though it is in the middle of summer, her mother orders her kids to keep the blinds closed during the doors and allows them to play outside.

The twins, while looking at some pictures, suspect that the woman in bandages is not their mother as they discuss what she is not doing what their mother is supposed to or inhabited to do. With the suspicion that the woman is an impostor, the twins tie her up and refuses to let her go. They interrogate her and ask who she is. She refuses to answer and they try to get to the bottom of the situation.

I am not going to say anymore about this movie as the movie provides so much hefty suspense onto our nerves that it is so uncomfortable to watch as the twins are put it in a situation of finding the truth of their mother and the woman behind the bandages. All three of them give strong performances as we follow them in a puzzle of deceit inside a house. It is a small and quiet horror film with such reprehensible notions and ideas in our minds of what may happen. The only thing that bothered me is part of the disturbing relevation that sort of does not make entire sense but it is shocking. It was a half-baked but half-brilliant idea, however, this is a horror movie to look for and try to get scared as Halloween nears.

***1/2