As an avid movie watching, I find myself getting excited at the prospect of a film that allegedly takes fresh perspective on a tired concept. Horror films generally get a film like this paraded around, every year or so, with some critic lauding it as what Horror films should be like. Occasionally I find myself agreeing with critics, as some films are so objectively well put together that it'd be hard to debate otherwise. Some films are like 'Goodnight Mommy' which raises critical acclaim and I am just scratching my head as to why.
The film is about a pair of boys who have a creepy mom who strangely feels the need to act like a complete weirdo after some mysterious operation. Now follow the film for roughly 15-20 minutes, and you will know exactly where it is going. I hardly even feel the need to put a spoiler warning, because it felt so obvious the way the movie sets up the 'twist' that I'm not even sure I should call it that. But to it's credit, it does set up the events, which is *SPOILERS* the mom is literally just recovering from accident that must involved Lukas dying. Elias creates an imaginary Lukas as a substitute to cope with this problem, and has some anxiety attached to his mother's strange appearance. Projecting this suspicious onto his imaginary brother, he is able to do some grizzly and bizarre things with Lukas constantly enforcing it. Early on in the film, we get several visual cues that allude to this realization, with Lukas going into the deep dark tunnel without a sense of fear, and Elias following after with much trepidation.
Elias' view of his mother has dramatically shifted since the accident and a divorce from his father(an exact event timeline isn't really given from what I gathered). Beyond his obviously strange appearance, she has become strict and never acknowledges Lukas' existence except when downplaying what influence he should have on Elias. As these scenes are played out, we have some fantastic camera work, using wide still shots with the mother character slinking about creepily.
The movie has a bit of lull when it becomes rather obvious the mother is simply dealing with a child having severe problems, but tries to give some credence to child's suspicion. Without going into too much more detail, we have a scene of the boys running away to a church in town after their mother reveals her face has healed up to some extent. once the boys arrive at the church, we are treated to one of my favorite indie-movie tropes, 'lobotomized dialogue', when the boys interact with the sexton at the church. Pretty much after this point I believe film goes completely downhill, with nonsensical dialogue, repeated/gratuitous torture, and hokey tropes like 'near-miss' save, with someone finally being about to start yelling for help just when the possible rescuers are out of ear-shot. It felt like the film maker wanted to do a torture-horror film with children torturing their mother, but wanted it to be the twist so he put all those great shots early on as a way of building false tension. Now all we have is a dime-store Misery with a demented child, torturing his mother at the behest of his brother that he mentally created.
Around this time, the film becomes fairly of typical modern torture films and body horror, begging and crying as the torture escalates in severity with an occasional reprieve to have the 'near-miss' trope that I mentioned earlier, and of course a false escape scene. Usually false escape scenes have some improbable thing happen to stop the victims from escaping, this film is no different. The mother trips and falls without putting her hands up brace for impact, and then somehow she is rendered unconscious from this trip. While she is unconscious long enough time for the boys to tie her up, and set up this elaborate display for her grizzly death, she eventually awakes to more repeated dialogue before she is given a screamingly painful fire death,
The film ends with Elias running through a field and imagining his mother and brother with him, and with me scratching my head as to how this is a masterpiece in any way. The camera work was fairly good and even exceptional in some scenes, but the story pacing trudged along after about 30 minutes into the film, and the dialogue was never anything that for popped out as special. It was a modern horror flick. It wasn't masterful art-horror film like Beyond the Black Rainbow or psychological-horror, it's a torture film masquerading as something more. Not a bad movie, but nothing quite as spectacular as I had seen promise for. The film certainly could have carried on with concept of a disturbed boy with psychological issues, but with such little build in that department aside from investment into the twist, it all felt hollow to me.
