Goodnight Mommy (2014) is an Austrian film co-written and co-directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz. Premiered at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival, it was also Austria's representative for the 2016 Academy Awards.
Mistakenly considered by most to be a horror film, it actually Goodnight Mommy takes the form of a drama with strong thriller veins in which the horror component is solely psychological, relating to family feelings and abandonment. An aseptic, glacial work in which the protagonists are emptied of their human side so that instead of this emerges the alteration of their emotional states and consequently their relational uncertainties.
Thus, Ich seh, Ich seh (original title) takes us to the beautiful Austrian moors where unspoiled nature is backdrop for the story of 10-year-old twins. Their mother has recently undergone major facial surgery, and her return home will mark the beginning of a family nightmare dictated by mistrust and estrangement from her unrecognizable face, so bandaged.
The Austrian directorial duo's intimate work brings to the stage an articulate script whose expressive power is weighted to structure and reinforce itself under the analytical capacity of a mature, patient audience that is able to ask questions. Fiala and Franz's cinema pits itself against the viewer with a disarming, inhuman coldness in 
whose silences and expectations corrode the already evanescent characterizations of the protagonists.
Between imposing glimpses of desolate nature and the stubborn presence of the color white within the walls of the house, the viewer will soon find himself in an asphyxiated condition in which any form of warmth and human feeling will be denied. The filmmakers thus wanted to offer the most attentive viewers a cinematic picture far from entertainment, in front of which the audience can only cash in on the blows of psychological abuse and toward which there can be no interaction of any kind except helpless participation in a type of cinema that in this case is literally dictated.
Goodnight Mommy is an unconventional film that reverses the canons of psychological horror filmography. A work that does not need music to reinforce the images or even elaborate dialogue to build the thrilling effect. Even the visual effects do not abound or arrogate anything as they are purely functional to the script and its crescendo.
Franz and Fiala's is a complex, intelligent piece of filmmaking and therefore not really suitable for the wider audience. Its duration (96 minutes), perhaps excessive, could also easily tire out those who are not prepared for such viewing, especially should it be a "rewatch" that would inevitably suffer from the lack of surprise effect.
The cast consists of Susanne Wuest, Elias Schwarz, and Lukas Schwarz. Ulrich Seidl produced the film while cinematography is by Martin Gschlacht.
Blu-ray Limited Edition by Midnight Factory
Koch Media's subsidiary for horror in Italy, Midnight Factory has released a Limited Edition of Goodnight Mommy, available in both DVD and Blu-ray formats. This is a prestigious slipcase edition containing a 6-page double-sided booklet in which there are informative texts edited by Manlio Gomarasca, editorial director of the above series.
Extras include Trailer, Making of, Interviews and some deleted scenes.
The audio compartment is provided by the presence of two classic tracks (Italian and German) DTS-HD 5.1 and an innovative Earound for better headphone listening.
