Goodnight Mommy review – Naomi Watts can’t save tepid horror remake

There’s an overwhelming lack of necessity to Amazon’s existentially pointless remake of the sleek Austrian horror Goodnight Mommy, a film that melted its chilly atmosphere with an overheated and overfamiliar last act twist. Without the fine, frightening direction of aunt-nephew duo Veronika Fran and Severin Fiala, we’re left with very little, a slick but soulless little movie that should appease neither fans of the original nor newcomers.

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The crafty setup does remain initially efficient, though. Identical twins Elias and Lukas (Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti, both impressive) are returning to their remote home after staying with their father and are met with a shock. Their mother (Naomi Watts) has bandages around her face, the result (she claims) of plastic surgery – a refresh, something she deems vital to her career as a Hollywood star. But it’s not just her look that’s different; there’s something off – she’s aggressive and secretive, throwing away hand-drawn pictures and smoking in her room – and the boys start to question who is underneath.

As is sadly and frequently the case with thrillers that pose a question of such great allure and intrigue, finding out the answer is rarely worth the second-guessing it takes to get there. The original was stylishly made and effectively creepy but it built up to a reveal that felt disappointingly cheap, like finding out a sharp designer suit was actually a knock-off all along.

Director Matt Sobel’s rehaul doesn’t change any of the specifics but tries harder to ramp up the drama over genre elements, hoping to make the ending as emotive as it is eerie. Thematically, there remains something interesting to what lies beneath and what’s being said about a specific kind of trauma, but both films just aren’t able to say it very convincingly. Looking back, the original feels more like a test-run for Fran and Fiala’s far more well-assembled follow-up, The Lodge, an equally dark and devious thriller that explored similar ideas but with a more keenly modulated mix of humanity and horror.

There is some fun to be had seeing Watts vamp it up, even if we can’t see much of her (there’s some A+ eye acting), slinkily dancing, drinking and smoking her way around the house, a sizzle reel that proves she should explore her villainous side more often. But Sobel’s direction feels a little lesser when compared with his leading lady, relying on dream sequences to push us to the edge, never getting anywhere close to the iciness of the original or finding anything distinctive enough to separate the aesthetic of his take.

The tired process of remaking foreign-language horror films, seemingly only for viewers unwilling to watch a film with subtitles, had largely, mercifully subsided in recent years and Goodnight Mommy is a reminder of why. In the press notes for the film, Sobel shares that his initial response when he was offered the film was a no, not seeing the point in revisiting something so recent. He should have trusted his first instinct.

• Goodnight Mommy is now available on Amazon Prime