Goodnight Mommy Trailer: A New, And Probably Less Scary, Version Of A Great Horror Story
Here we go again, but not in the way you might be expecting. The 2014 horror hit "Goodnight Mommy," is getting an American reboot and we now have the film's first trailer.
The sneak peek for the Prime Video original showcases Naomi Watts in the title matriarchal role. Much like the first film, the movie follows a mother reuniting with her twin sons following a cosmetic surgery that requires her to wear bandages around her entire face and head. Slowly, the boys start to suspect their mother, well, isn't who she says she is, and they join forces to unmask her and find out the truth.
The remake stars Watts alongside Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti, while "Younger" star Peter Hermann rounds out the cast of the film. "Take Me to the River" director Matt Sobel helmed the film from a script by Kyle Warren, who is known for his work on Fox's short-lived "Lethal Weapon" series. Watts, Sobel, Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala serve as executive producers on the project alongside Kyle Warren, Derrick Tseng, Sébastien Beffa and François Yon.
Nothing tops the original
The original 2014 stunner was directed by Franz and Fiala, who have seemingly given their blessing to this new version of the story. However, I'm not sure that I see the same caliber of filmmaking on display in this new trailer as I did in the trailer for the original film, which I revisited right after watching the new one. The trailer for the Austrian movie, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival the year of its release, is deeply unsettling and profoundly scary even though it actually does very little in the few minutes of screen time it gives you.
The mother's gestures combined with her cold stature and demeanor are what really take over and chill you in the original trailer, especially because the sneak peek doesn't have much dialogue in it. But with the Prime Video version, the stakes feel noticeably lower and Watts is hardly the horror of a changed mother that Susanne Wuest was as the original mother. Watts has changed, yes; Her sons notice she's become more interested in smoking in the bathroom and delegating house rules than giving them the love and affection they're used to from her. But she's not cold, not in any way chilling. The tone is just completely missing from this second attempt. Of course, it remains to be seen how the full film lives up to the original, as this is only a trailer — but so far, it isn't looking promising.
"Goodnight Mommy" will be available to stream on Prime Video on September 16, 2022.
When twin brothers (Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti) arrive at their mother's (Naomi Watts) country home to discover her face covered in bandages—the result, she explains, of recent cosmetic surgery—they immediately sense that something doesn't add up. She sets strange new house rules, smokes in her bathroom, and secretly rips up a drawing they gave her—things their loving mother would never do. As her behavior grows increasingly bizarre and erratic, a horrifying thought takes root in the boys' minds: The sinking suspicion that the woman beneath the gauze, who's making their food and sleeping in the next room, isn't their mother at all.