American remakes of acclaimed international films are always a gamble, especially when the original is as special as Goodnight Mommy. The upcoming remake is based on Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s 2014 chiller about twin brothers holed up in their home with a bandaged-up woman who should be their mother. But is it really her? And if so, why is she acting so strangely?
Underneath those bandages is Naomi Watts, joined by Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti as the skeptical siblings. Behind the camera for this remake is Matt Sobel, who directed 2015’s Take Me to the River and episodes of Netflix’s horror series Brand New Cherry Flavor.
There are pretty big shoes to fill. The previous version is a modern classic that will leave you unnerved with the shocking lengths it goes to explore maternal instinct or the lack thereof.
Prime Video will debut Goodnight Mommy on September 16th.
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.
