Austrian screenwriting and directing duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala either have terror children or were terror children. They love staging a good the-children-will-be-the-death-of-us yarn, pivoting from a story about two young mischievous twins torturing their mother (who’s recently undergone facially reconstructive surgery and, consequently, her children now refuse to believe is actually their mother) in their celebrated German-language debut Goodnight Mommy to a tale of two young mischievous siblings torturing their soon-to-be stepmother in their English-language horror show The Lodge. Read More
Out in Theaters: ‘GOODNIGHT MOMMY’
A midnight masterstroke of paranoia and syngenesophobia, Goodnight Mommy toys with the brittle psyches of a nuclear family like a child toasting ants with his magnifying glass. Tensions reach a fever-pitch as roguish twins, suspecting their mother fresh home from cosmetic surgery is not who she claims to be, decide to launch all-out warfare. The ensuing chronicling of domestic distrust is taken to fiery extremes; the fallout will no doubt prove hard to bear for some viewers – both for its graphic depictions of violence and for the film’s deliberate pacing – but those willing to wait it out are in store for a nasty slice of psychological horror pie.
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A midnight masterstroke of paranoia and syngenesophobia, Goodnight Mommy toys with the brittle psyches of a nuclear family like a child toasting ants with his magnifying glass. Tensions reach a fever-pitch as roguish twins, suspecting their mother fresh home from cosmetic surgery is not who she claims to be, decide to launch all-out warfare. The ensuing chronicling of domestic distrust is taken to fiery extremes; the fallout will no doubt prove hard to bear for some viewers – both for its graphic depictions of violence and for the film’s deliberate pacing – but those willing to wait it out are in store for a nasty slice of psychological horror pie.
Read More