In the latest episode of the series Americans meet a European film, a certain screenwriter Kyle Warren and a certain director Matt Sobel tackled the psychological thriller of the same name – horror by the Austrians Veronica Franz and Severin Fiala. And while the Austrian version of “Goodnight Mommy” or “Ich seh, Ich seh” in the original, has long enjoyed a cult status with every honest horror fan, this American version turned out to be another in a series of mere rewrites. I really can’t understand the laziness, lack of interest or whatever so that these damn Americans don’t even try to at least minimally try to change something. They probably follow the line of least resistance and assume that the majority of their compatriots are the same and that they don’t bother watching movies from some Austria, so everything they see there will be a kind of deja vu.
And the story is completely identical from beginning to end. Twin brothers Elias and Lukas have arrived at an isolated estate where their mother (Naomi Watts can’t seem to get back into shape from 10 or 15 years ago) is recovering from facial plastic surgery. Her whole face is covered with bandages and a mask so that she can recover as soon as possible, and the boys will start to suspect that it is not their mommy at all, but some intruder who is just pretending to be. How it will unfold, all those film gourmands who enjoyed that ingeniously creepy, uneasy original, in which the Austrian couple managed to bring it to near perfection, know.
Although Sobel, not to be too critical, also managed to achieve a somewhat eerie, uneasy and completely confusing atmosphere here, the main problem is that we know how it will unfold. On the other hand, when I watched the same story again, a lot of things are much more obvious and clear, but while watching this remake, the question that passed through my mind all the time was what is the meaning of this film and why on earth did someone think to record everything that we already seen a long time ago, only deprived of the original suspense, ominousness and final shock and surprise?
