Goodnight Mommy 2015

As Susanne Wuest (mother) returns home from her cosmetic facial surgery, her ten-year-old twins, Elias and Lukas (Elias and Lukas Schwarz), are met with an unsettling sight: their mother’s bandaged face, shrouded in mystery. The once-familiar visage now seems alien, her eyes and mouth the only features visible beneath the gauze. The brothers’ unease is compounded by their mother’s erratic behavior, as she displays a sudden, inexplicable favoritism towards Elias, neglecting Lukas altogether. This bizarre conduct is further exacerbated by her draconian rules: blackout curtains, an enforced silence within the house, and limited freedom to play outside.

The twins begin to suspect that something sinister lies beneath their mother’s bandages. Their trepidation grows as they uncover a photograph revealing another woman who bears a striking resemblance to their mother - a realization that sends shockwaves through their young minds. They become convinced that the woman occupying their home is an imposter, and their desperation to uncover the truth drives them to bind her to the bed, refusing to release her until she divulges the whereabouts of their true mother.

Meanwhile, two Red Cross employees arrive at the house, only to depart once Elias secretly pilfers a substantial sum from his mother’s purse. As tensions escalate, the twins’ suspicions about their mother’s identity are confirmed when they discover that the woman is unable to scream for help after she breaks free from her restraints and mouths sealed shut with tape.

In a desperate attempt to silence her permanently, the twins seal her lips with Super Glue, only to realize that their actions have deprived her of sustenance. They eventually release her, cutting away the adhesive with small scissors - a gruesome reminder of the darkness that has consumed their once-peaceful lives.

As the woman lies captive, her physical restraints momentarily relaxed by the twins’ benevolent gesture, she succumbs to a profound sense of vulnerability and despair, evidenced by an involuntary act of bedwetting. This fleeting respite from her shackles is short-lived, however, as the twins’ cleverly devised booby trap springs into action, sending her crashing to the ground with a painful head wound that leaves her insensible.

Upon regaining consciousness, she finds herself glued to the living room floor, helpless and immobile. In a desperate bid to break the cycle of torment, Elias resorts to a drastic measure: setting fire to their home in a misguided attempt to coerce his mother into revealing the truth about their shared past. The woman’s adamant insistence that she is indeed their biological mother only serves to further exacerbate the situation.

As the flames lick at the walls, a long-held secret begins to unravel, and the mother reveals to Elias the devastating truth: Lukas, the twins’ sibling, had met an untimely demise prior to the events of the film. Her words are laced with grief and regret as she implores her surviving son to set her free from her prison of emotional pain, allowing them to finally find closure and move on from the tragedy that has befallen their family.

Elias, however, remains skeptical, demanding proof of his mother’s identity by asking her to account for Lukas’s whereabouts. The woman, unable to see the hallucination of her deceased son threatening to set fire to a nearby curtain, is left powerless to respond. In a tragic sequence of events, Elias’s actions inadvertently seal their mother’s fate, as she succumbs to the inferno before the arrival of firefighters.

The film concludes with an hauntingly beautiful tableau: the ghostly apparition of the mother reunited with her twin sons in a sun-kissed cornfield, a poignant reminder that some wounds may never fully heal, but can still be acknowledged and honored.