Goodnight Mommy(2022 ver.), a horror movie recommended｜good for English listening training as well

(2, January, 2023)

１．Prologue

Recently, I have watched a film named Goodnight Mommy made by Amazon Studio in 2022. Originally, Goodnight Mommy was made by an Austrian film company in 2014.
This article deals with the 2022 Amazon version, which is available free for Amazon prime members. For English learners like me, it is recommended in terms of listening training. If you are a learner of English and into horror movies, Goodnight Mommy is one of the best to enjoy while working on English listening. I will bring you the film information, trailer video, plot and my review.

※Here is a warning that my review chapter includes some spoilers, describing my impression about the final event of this film. If you would like to avoid spoilers, please skip my review chapter.

２．Film information of Goodnight Mommy

Here is information about the movie.

Title	Goodnight Mommy
Genre	Psychological Horror
Made in	USA
Running Time	92 min.
Released in	2022
Director	Matt Sobel
Starring	Naomi Watts Cameron Crovetti Nicholas Crovetti
Distributor	Amazon Studios

Reference：Wikipedia Goodnight Mommy (2022 film)

・Trailor video

Video title：Goodnight Mommy – Official Trailer | Prime Video
Youtube channel：Prime Video
URL：https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lKm2Vct3x4

For Amazon Prime members;
→Watch movie now

If you are an Amazon Prime member, you can immediately watch it to click through.

３．Rough plot of the film

Elias and Lukas are twins who are returned to their mother’s home for the first time after parents’ divorce. However, she looked different and strange, with her face totally wrapped with bandages due to downtime of face surgery. The Twins felt something was wrong with her mother for differences compared with old times, doubting she was a fake…
In the finale of this movie, you will be overwhelmed with the stunningly weird ending.

４．Thoughts and review

※This chapter includes some spoilers about ending plot of the film. To avoid it, just go to the next chapter.

Goodnight Mommy was a good horror movie. My score is 3.5 stars (among 5). I liked the weird atmosphere that surrounded whole scenes and the surprising ending was well organized. However, after watching, I wondered something such as ‘why the mother bullied her children although she is a real mother?’ and ‘How was the relationship with her husband? What was her conversation over the phone?’.
In the finale of the film, the ironic fact is revealed that Elias has been seeing an imaginary friend of his brother, Lukas who was shot and killed accidentally by him in the past. Elias is just playing with his imaginary friend from the beginning of the movie. The weird mother who wrapped her face with a bandage, is his real mother. She tried to tell the fact to Elias but he could not accept it, to lose her mother too, again accidentally… Finally, Elias got another  imaginary friends; his mother. He lives along with ‘them’; Lukas and his mother.

It is a very sad and ironic ending. Seeing reviews on the Internet, most viewers realised that the Lukas is fake while I didn’t. They say they knew it halfway of watching, as Lukas wasn’t noticed by his mother unnaturally in some scenes. I am not good at recognition for that kind of small hints, so at first, I could not catch this fact, totally misunderstood the story like following;
I thought the mother is a fake; what she says are all lies. And Lukas is alive and while he was leaving, he finally found their real mother and brought her back.
This way of my misinterpretation makes Goodnight Mommy upside down. In this point of my misunderstood view, this movie is happy ending. I realized I was wrong after checking with my wife who watched it together. Until then, I could not catch the true meaning of the finale of this film. However, I thought it is also interesting that this story can be seen in 2 different ways.

・Goodnight Mommy is also recommended for English learning

If you are learning American English, watching this movie is preferable. Actors, Naomi Watts, twins Cameron Crovetti and Nicholas Crovetti speak in plain American English accent. And most of their conversation is family-related; you can use the same phrases in many scenes of your daily life.
I am Japanese, learning English, intermediate level; I could catch many conversations in the film without looking at the subtitles.
So watching Goodnight Mommy is highly recommended for English listening training (Tachou in Japanese, meaning ‘Listening a lot’).

５．Epilogue

This article gathered information of the film, Goodnight Mommy (Amazon Studio version).
After all, it is recommended for those who love horror movies. Moreover, if you are an intermediate learner of English language and a horror fan, it is a must-check one. I thought it’s interesting that this movie can be interpreted in 2 ways; sad ending and happy ending. If you want to know the real meaning of it, please check out the film first and come back to my article to read my review with spoilers.

→Back to Chapter 2 to check out film information

Fin.