GOODNIGHT MOMMY (German) review (7/10)…you’ll never hear the sound of snipping scissors the same.

Creepy as can be, but too slow paced to be as effective as it could have been. So often with “horror” movies, the story will bear a very taut, tense 60 minutes…but it gets stretched to 85 or 90 to find a market (not a lot of places screening 60 minute movies). That is absolutely the case with this cold-as-ice creepy-fest.

Watching GOODNIGHT MOMMY, I also felt “only in Europe.” Or at least, “not in the States.” Our movies would never let children be quite so blithely brutal. (Indeed, the Naomi Watts starring remake watered down the more uncomfortable elements.) It’s the story of twin boys (aged maybe 11–13?) who are home alone at their gorgeous home in the country (Austria, it would seem). They play in the fields, explore caves, etc. Then one day, their mother comes home from the hospital. Her face is almost completely bandaged and the parts of her that do show are bruised and even bloody. The twins are instantly convinced that this woman is NOT their mother. At first, we just get to share their “detective work” on this woman, and begin to see things from their side. But they want to be convinced, and the things they begin to do to this woman in the name of getting to the truth are quite unsettling.