The closer we go to Halloween, the more we crave terrifying media. The Amazon Prime Video premiere of Goodnight Mommy, a remake of the psychological horror film written and directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, is set for September 16. The twin Crovetti boys (Cameron and Nicholas) start to think that their mother (Naomi Watts) isn’t who she claims she is in this isolating thriller. Prime Video has released a sneak peek trailer called “Angry Mom” ahead of the film’s premiere, and in it, Watts gives a tight performance as the film’s unnamed mother figure. Elias and Lucas, two little boys, are taken to their mother’s rural house in the film. The mother’s face is totally covered by bandages when the twins are dropped off by their father. The boys find it strange that she claims to have had extensive cosmetic surgery when no such thing was ever mentioned to them.
When their normally kind and kind mother starts making up strange new rules and lighting up in the house, the kids start to get suspicious. The bandages remain in place, her demeanour towards her sons is deteriorating, and she throws away artwork they’ve given her. Incredibly, the boys start to doubt if the lady under the bandages is really their mother at all. The lads are shown in the video watching a film on their phones after they had gone to bed. In the tape, Watts sings “You Are My Sunshine,” but within seconds, Mother is banging on the door of their locked bedroom. The woman who angrily lets herself in is a long cry from the charming, melodious woman singing on the phone that one of the brothers tucks under his pillow.
Watts is seen in the film frantically searching the room for the phone the lads had been trying to conceal from her. The viewer feels the sons’ utter terror at her hands in only one moment, and her depiction of Mother is cold and nasty when she gets in their faces and hisses at them. Oscar-nominated actress Watts established herself as a genre mainstay in the 2002 adaptation of The Ring as the dogged (to a fault) reporter. Fans first recognised her in David Lynch’s psycho-thriller Mulholland Drive, then she went on to feature with Sean Penn in 21 Grams and in The Impossible, for which she received Academy Award nods. In the 2007 adaptation of the horror film Funny Games, Watts once again delivered a performance that kept audiences on the edge of their seats.
Ryan Murphy’s anthology series Feud is her next endeavour, and it was revealed earlier this year. Director Matt Sobel and writer Kyle Warren reworked the original script for Prime Video’s version of Goodnight Mommy. Executive producers Fiala and Franz. On Friday, September 16th, exclusively on Amazon Prime Video, Goodnight Mommy has its world premiere.