MFF Random Observation: Kate & Leopold foreshadowed Hugh Jackman’s career as Wolverine
We here at MFF love randomness. We have random awards, random podcast questions and random posts that revolve around John Travolta smoking cigarettes. So, it is only natural that when I discover an incredible link between Kate & Leopold and the rest of Hugh Jackman’s filmography I need to share it. The following post examines how a tiny film about about a time traveling Aristocrat has extreme (not really) parallels to a beloved actors career.
Sit back, relax and be prepared to have your mind blown!
I am going to start with three Wolverine facts and work my way into some deeper cuts involving the films Butter and Eddie the Eagle.
- Hugh Jackman is related to Leiv Schreiber in Kate & Leopold and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (cue dramatic music)
In Kate & Leopold Leiv Schreiber plays a distant relative who time travels with Jackman from 1876 to 2001. In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Schreiber plays Jackman’s half-brother and they kill many people from 1845 to 2009. They’ve covered a lot of ground and time together whilst being related. You might need a few minutes to digest this information because it is amazing (not really).
They also appeared in the soul crushing Movie 43. Their segments were different but Jackman’s is the most memorable because he literally has balls attached to his neck.
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2. James Mangold directed Kate & Leopold and The Wolverine
The two remained friends after K&L and Mangold stepped in to direct The Wolverine after Darren Aronofsky dropped out. I think Kate & Leopold might be the better movie.
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3. Time Travel has played a big part in Hugh Jackman’s career
Leopold found himself transported from 1876 to 2001. In X-Men: Days of Future Past Wolverine traveled from 2023 to 1973 in order to save the world. I love that his time traveling shenanigans started with K&L and continued through to Days of Future Past.
Jackman also finds himself in several different time periods in The Fountain but that is open to viewer interpretation .
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4. Leopold isn’t happy when he is asked to peddle pond scum butter in K&L. In 2013 he found himself sculpting butter in the movie Butter.
The guy went from promoting to sculpting butter. No other actor on the planet can say this.
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5. Hugh Jackman and his K&L costar have both fake cinematic orgasms in movies taking place in the 1980s. (this one is a stretch)
In the wonderful film Eddie the Eagle Jackman lets loose with a full on fake orgasm to inspire Eddie. One has to wonder if Meg Ryan had some tips after her stellar performance in When Harry Met Sally (she probably didn’t). Also, according to the film’s timelines they both took place in the 1980s.
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There you have it! Kate & Leopold still haunts Hugh Jackman and this is proof!
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast #46: Troglodytes on Skype
You can download the pod on Itunes or LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOGTALKRADIO.
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome!
We hope you enjoyed our previous episode:
The MFF Podcast #45: The Best Comedies of the 21st Century.
SUMMARY: This week we discuss, spoil, analyze and review three recent horror movie releases: the Austrian arthouse Goodnight Mommy (2014), the indie techno-horror Unfriended (2015) and Kurt Russell’s horror-Western hybrid Bone Tomahawk (2015).
We also answer such important questions as…
“Why would our co-hosts fit well into The 13th Warrior (1999)?”
“Why did the ‘real world’ food in The Matrix (1999) taste so terrible?”
“Would you be happy if you inherited the 13 Ghosts (2001) mansion?”
LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOGTALKRADIO,
or head over Itunes so you can download, REVIEW, RATE and SHARE the pod.
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I love the Superbowl movie trailers because the big studios spend a lot of money to promote their blockbusters. This means the 30-second trailers pack in a lot of action into one commercial. Thus, we are blessed with copious amounts of property destruction and glory shots of things blowing up. In honor of the new trailers I’ve decided to rank them in order of property destruction. I want the world to know how much damage a 30-second trailer can do. The following post is made up of complete guess work and I am not a registered insurance agent. However, I’ve taken a lot of time making sure the rankings are correct and the sums are close to their actual price (not really).
12. Eddie the Eagle
Property Damage Meter – 0
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There are a few bruises but Eddie doesn’t destroy anything when he tumbles down the ski slopes. This trailer is an insurance agencies best friend.
Go watch Eddie the Eagle. It is a very fun film with very little property destruction.
Damage amount: $0
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11. The Secret Life of Pets
Property Damage Meter – 1
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How much money will it cost to repair the damage? A punk dog chews up some shoes which may or may not be expensive. I would go with $1,000 dollars in damage because there were some Jimmy Choo shoes in the closet.
Damage amount: $1,000
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10. 10 Cloverfield Lane
Property Destruction Meter – 2
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The trailer starts off with a car flipping many times over. That is $20,000 right off the bat. Then, either a house or bunker catches on fire. I’m assuming with a monster on the loose the fire department isn’t coming so the damage is about $200,000.
Damage amount: $220,000
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9. The Jungle Book
Property Damage Meter – 2
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The biggest problem with the property destruction is the location. An ancient temple gets slightly ruffled and will most certainly need fixing. However, how in the heck do you get a work crew in there? It is in the middle of a dangerous jungle and the rocks cannot be easy to replace. I would say with the work crews and quarry work it would cost about $5,000,000
Damage amount: $5,000,000
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8. Jason Bourne
Property Damage Meter – 5
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I hate when bad guys target innocent motorists. The trailer for Jason Bourne shows egregious damage to some poor podcast listening motorists. I counted about 20 cars being destroyed which amounts to about $400,000 in damage. Also, while Jason is riding around on a motorcycle the bad guys are shooting rocket launchers at him and causing massive fireballs. That is at least $5,000,000. I wonder if Jason Bourne ever thinks about hiding out in the desert? That way when people attack him they are blowing up sand and the occasional rattle snake.
Damage amount: $5,4000,000
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7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2
Property Destruction Meter – 5
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Once again some poor motorists are crunched by the bad guys which causes about ($500,000) in car and building damage. Also, some very expensive looking machinery ($4,000,000) gets destroyed when smashed on a bridge ($1,000,000). I’m surprised at the overall lack of things getting obliterated in the trailer. I’m impressed at the restraint.
Damage amount: $5,500,000
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6. Deadpool
Property Damage Meter – 5
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The refreshing thing about the Deadpool trailer is the property destruction is localized. Nobody is trying to destroy the world and aside from a port blowing up ($40,000,000) the world isn’t threatened. Of course, the stock cars go boom ($100,000) and there is some bridge destruction ($2,000,000) but that isn’t too bad! Good job Deadpool!
Damage amount:$42,100,000
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5. Alice Through the Looking Glass
Property Damage Meter – 7
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There is a world/city/town that is completely on fire! I don’t know how it happened but it looks like a terrible place to own land. I’m guessing the fire goes unchecked and destroys a wide swath of land as well. Between the loss of a town infrastructure and hundreds of acres of land the damage is about $63,000,000
Damage amount: $63,000,000
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4. Captain America: Civil War
Property damage meter – 7.1
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I have no clue how much War Machine’s suit costs but I’m guessing $100,000,000. Also, it looks like an entire airport runway is being destroyed ($5,000,000) and there is some stock building destruction ($3,000,000). It bums me out that a superhero squable costs the tax payers and insurance companies so much money.
Damage amount: $108,000,000
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3. Gods of Egypt
Property damage mater – 7.6
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A plethora of temples are destroyed which means a lot of slaves are going to be forced to rebuild them. Most of the peasant class is smooshed by battling deities so the Egyptian army needs to go to war to collect more slaves to rebuild. Once again, why can’t these battling gods fight in the desert? The damage and war costs are easily around $50,000,000,000.
Damage amount: $50,000,000,000
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2. X-Men: Apocalypse
Property damage meter – 10
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The name of the film is X-Men: Apocalypse. Thus, the property damage is going to be extreme. The bad guy even says “everything they’ve built will fall.” When an all powerful bad guy starts destroying the world there will be about $50,000,000,000,000 in property damage in a 30-second trailer.
Damage amount: $50,000,000,000,000
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- Independence Day: Resurgence
Property damage meter – 11
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The aliens pick up a city then drop it on another city……… The property damage is going to break records. I’m going with $5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. I feel this sum is adequate because both alien and human property is being destroyed.
Damage amount: Way too much too calculate.
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John’s Horror Corner: Frankenhooker (1990), a raunchy slapstick Frankenstein throwback exploitation film with loads of exploding prostitutes.
NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW
This article contains images of prosthetic disembodied breasts and prosthetic naked bodies exploding. No actual human nudity is present. But, come on guys, you don’t want to get caught looking at this at work.
NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW
MY CALL: No horror to be found in this gloriously raunchy slapstick horror comedy peppered with exploding hookers and rubber disembodied limbs. MORE MOVIES LIKE Frankenhooker: Basket Case 1-3 (1982-91), Brain Damage (1988), Killer Workout (1987), Death Spa (1989), Head of the Family (1996) and Hideous! (1997). Maybe even Puppet Master (1989), Ghoulies (1985) and Seed People (1992).
I have somehow gone 35 years of my life without seeing this movie, deprioritizing it, assuming it’s no big deal, sticking to the classics and new releases…boy was that a mistake!!! After just 7 minutes (yes, I paused and checked) of this B-movie madness I already know two things: 1) this movie is garbage, and 2) this is exactly the kind of garbage I LOVE!
We meet Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz; Street Trash, RoboCop 3), a man who has somehow been kicked out of three medical schools, and his reanimated Cyclops brain creature experiment that he is working on in the kitchen…and everyone simply thinks he’s just a little weird for working on a REANIMATED BRAIN with one eye on the kitchen table!!!! But his whole life is about to change when his fiancée Elizabeth (Patty Mullen; Penthouse Pet, Zombinatrix) is killed in a freak accident with a supercharged lawnmower he invented. The news coverage of the massacre is hilarious! Oh, yeah, this flick is something special for sure!
Jeffrey Franken is no Victor Frankenstein (2015). He over-explains his downward spiral into mad scientist mania to his mother as if reading a list of symptoms from a psychiatric manual. While comically narrating his own insanity he draws elaborate blueprints of electrodes over a body’s framework (and it has boobs LOL), power drills his skull to alleviate headaches, and has dates with his fiancée’s disembodied head. Needless to say the acting and writing are terrible (but maybe “good” for the bad horror genre), but this movie remains a delight.
Is it just me, or does it look like he’s designing a giant female bodybuilder??? LOL
So since Jeff needs perfect female body parts to bring life back to his fiancée, naturally he goes to the city and arranges a prostitute crack-whore party, plays doctor, measures nipples, wrestles hookers and watches them literally explode as they overdose on drugs–and we overdose on cheesiness.
Nudity and disembodied limbs abound. Jeff superglues and welds his perfect Elizabeth back together from sacks of spare hooker parts, a pile of severed breasts, and a trash can of severed legs with bunyans from extensive streetwalking.
Once Elizabeth is back on her feet after a deliciously B-movied-up Frankenstein’s laboratory scene, she stumbles about with all the twitchy grace of a newborn foal and sports a Sylvester Stallone lip sneer. Assembled from mostly hooker parts, she behaves like…well…a frankenhooker–all the way down to the undead sex scene during which she sex-electrocutes her first John to death.
Written and directed by Frank Henenlotter (Basket Case 1-3, Brain Damage, Bad Biology), this relatively goreless exploitation cult classic deviates from his violent normal pedigree, having not a scary nor brutal moment–it’s pure slapstick comedy shown through a campy horror filter. A few steps above the raunchier Full Moon releases (Head of the Family, The Killer Eye) or anything from Troma studios, this goofy flick boasts severed heads, abundant bare breasts, mutant monsters made of spare hooker parts and rubber limbs galore! It’s awkwardly weird, strangely funny and classically so-bad-it’s-good. The final twist is quirky campiness at its inappropriate best (think Sleepaway Camp).
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The MFF Survival Guide: Surviving Movies With “13” in the Title
After watching The Final Girls I’ve started asking myself an age-old question. What movies could I survive if I was teleported into them and couldn’t simply run away?
I can’t pull a Dr. and sprint away.
The question is incredibly important and I decided to tackle it headlong. I figured a great place to start would be in movies with “13” in the title. More often than not movies with 13 in the title mean doom, gloom and a lot of pain. The following post examines if I could survive movies like 13 Assassins, 13 Ghosts, Assault on Precinct 13, The 13th Warrior, Friday the 13th, District B13 and Apollo 13. .
1. Friday the 13th
Chance of Survival – 0 – 5%
If I was transported into this film it would be very similar to the Camp Bloodbath scenario in The Final Girls. The kids knew what was going on but still ended up as serial killer fodder. The camp counselors in Friday the 13th meet a grisly death and the only person left alive is the final girl. I’d have no chance. The best thing I could do is delay Mrs. Voorhees long enough for others to get away.
Best chance for Survival – Don’t have sex. Don’t get drunk. Don’t Investigate. Don’t get in a Canoe. Don’t trust middle-aged women. Don’t try to fix the generator. Hide somewhere and stay there.
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2. Thir13en Ghosts
Chance of Survival – 3%
You are trapped in a house that is powered by evil ghosts who just so happen to be on the loose. You are dead. I guess the only way to survive would be…..actually, I would be dead. Even if I had a knowledge of the ghosts and had a Spaceball’s esque tape of the proceedings I would meet a violent end.
Best chance for survival – There is something about a ghost being created out of true love so I would stay close to the family and let Matthew Lillard be the hero. While Lillard is getting snapped in two for his bravery I would be chilling behind the door hoping the ghosts don’t wise up. I would just relax behind that ghost blocking door and hope the eventual house explosion doesn’t kill me.
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3. 13 Assassins
Chance of Survival – 6%
One word. Hide. The carnage that makes up the final battle is insane and there is no way I could fight my way through it. If I tried to fight I would be the first one dead and the only way I could help the good guys is if the bad guys tripped over me. I would just stay on a roof and throw rocks Hobbit style until they caught up with me. Skilled warriors couldn’t survive in 13 Assassins so I’d be in a whole lot of trouble.
Best chance for survival – Hide. Hide like I’ve never hidden before. Find a nice hut somewhere and hope that nobody falls into the cozy nook.
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4. Assault on Precinct 13
Chance of Survival – 50%
Two things could happen here. I survive the gang onslaught and find my way into the secure basement. Or, I meet a violent end while a John Carpenter synth score blares in the background. Not many people survive Carpenter’s R-rated action fests but he gives you enough hope in thinking you could dodge enough bullets to walk out slightly scathed.
Best chance for survival – Pull a Jack Burton and hope something knocks me out while the heroes and villains wipe each other out.
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5. Apollo 13
Survival Rate: 100%
Tom Hanks is on board. I’d be cool.
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6. District B13
Chance of Survival – 17%
I would blow out my knee immediately and become fodder for the bad guys. Parkour isn’t meant for 6’4 Swedish people so I would just be hurting myself everywhere. Also, I’d feel terrible for the populace because there is no way I could get to the bomb on time.
Best Chance For Survival – If a foot chase broke out on open ground I might have a chance of hiding long enough for the bad guys to forget about me. If Dolph Lundgren can star in a movie called Hidden Assassin then I could surely mimic him
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7. The 13th Warrior
Chance of Survival – 83%
I am big Swedish guy who is smart enough stay out of the action and not do dumb things that put me in the range of the crazy cannibals. If I found myself in the action I would stay close to Buliwyf and hope he wipes out everyone around us. A decent amount of vikings and villagers lived so I would stay close to the tough guys and hope for the best.
Best Chance for Survival – Hope that I have an awesome moment where I realize the bad guys are only human and I go on a rampage resulting in me being the battle MVP. Or, I get knocked out and fall under something where I won’t get smooshed by cavalry. It worked for Bilbo in The Battle of the Five Armies.
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MY CALL: This movie samples heavily from The House of the Devil (2009) and Housebound (2014), but lacks the stylistic magic of either. That said, I found this movie to be quite enjoyable. Not good, mind you, but enjoyable. The delivery is spot on for this otherwise ridiculous premise.
I know. This job DOES sound too good to be true!
I walked into this movie with hopeful optimism, praying this wouldn’t be another evil doll movie disaster like Annabelle (2014; podcast discussion of Annabelle). I’m quite happy to say I enjoyed it…yet I would hesitate to call it “good.” It’s fun, it’s enjoyable (in my opinion anyway), but I could see a lot of people getting annoyed with it.
In the first half of The Boy our very capable director William Brent Bell (Wer, Stay Alive, The Devil Inside) samples heavily from The House of the Devil (2009) as we meet Greta (Lauren Cohan; The Walking Dead). Hired to nanny a young boy while his senior citizen parents are on a 3-month holiday–a little odd, by the way, to hire a nanny you’ve never met to meet your 8-year-old child one day and then spend the next 3 months alone with him as his sole caretaker–she travels all the way from America to a remote manor in England–so remote that, of course, there is no cell reception or internet access–only to find out that the boy is, in fact, a doll which the perhaps disturbed and elderly parents consider to be very much alive.
The delivery from the parents is awkward, eerie and a bit funny–probably exactly as intended. These nutty parents maintain a dire poker face while referring to the “boy” (strangely named Brahms like he’s some Austrian composer) as if this creepy doll could hear and understand them. But, just like The House of the Devil (2009), the pay is so unreasonably high to conduct such a (suspiciously) simple task that she stays despite the fact that her Creep-o-meter is reading an 11. Oh, right, and the boy has rules.
As laughably farfetched as this premise sounds, I felt it was well-delivered and quite enjoyable. They got the tone just right. So if this movie isn’t for you, my guess is it’s because this kind of movie in general isn’t for you. It’s also not gory and more creepy than scary.
I know what she’s thinking. The answer is yes, Lauren, this film IS going to reduce you to doing a shower scene.
And the answer is no, Walking Dead fans, you don’t see her naked. LOL. Just some upper thigh action.
My biggest criticism would have to be the needless addition of Greta’s crazy, violent, obsessed and abusive ex-boyfriend. He’s mentioned in the beginning to help justify Greta looking overseas for work, but after a couple more mentions it becomes obvious that we’re going to meet this Mr. Personality eventually. Thankfully it’s late in the movie, but the character adds nothing to the story. In fact, I found his presence aggravating.
After all sorts of needless drama picks up steam as we get on board the train to crazytown after “something bad” happens to the doll. Any explanation beyond that would surely spoil the ending. But the movie succeeds in maintaining an uncomfortably eerie atmosphere and some of the jump-scares were simply epic…for jump-scares anyway. I really enjoyed them.
This movie has a ridiculous premise, a straight-faced delivery, and it meets us in the middle with a very entertaining and in no way slapstick experience.
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The MFF Podcast #45: The Best Comedies of the 21st Century
Hello all. Mark here.
You can stream the pod on Blog Talk Radio or download it from Itunes. If you get a chance please rate the review the pod. You are awesome!
The MFF podcast is back and we are talking the best 21st century comedies! I recently broke down the critical/audience data on 370 comedies and figured out the top rated comedies of this century. The list is eclectic (we wouldn’t have it any other way) and the discussion covers everything from Sideways to Out Cold to Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil.
Horror comedy is still comedy….with lots of college kids killing themselves.
As always we answer random questions and ponder whether Yetis are actually vampire/werewolf hybrids. John Leavengood continues his love affair with Ryan Reynolds and I wax poetic about Wes Anderson. You will love it.
You can stream the pod on Blog Talk Radio or download it from Itunes. If you get a chance please rate the review the pod.
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John’s Horror Corner: Unfriended (2015), an indie Techno-Horror about a Skype session with a vengeful spirit.
MY CALL: As silly as it may sound, this neither scary nor gory indie Techno-Horror about a Skype session with a vengeful spirit was somehow VERY engaging to me. If you can get me interested in a film that takes place entirely on a computer monitor about a Skype call gone wrong, then you’ve succeeded as a filmmaker. Contrary to all expectations, I found myself introduced to characters that feel like “real people” doing “normal things” and reacting credibly to incredible circumstances–I liked them a lot. These kids all did a excellent job and so did the director and writing team!
MORE MOVIES LIKE Unfriended: Other technology-linked horror (or “techno-horror”) include White Noise (2005), Pulse (2001, 2006), Strangeland (1998), Other Halves (2016), Stay Alive (2006) and One Missed Call (2003, 2008).
Contrary to all expectations, I found myself introduced to characters that feel like “real people” doing “normal things” and reacting credibly to incredible circumstances–I liked them a lot.
After reviewing a video of her friend Laura’s (Heather Sossaman; Desecrated, Fairy Tales) suicide online and the embarrassing party video (posted by her “friends”) that led to her suicide, we meet Blaire (Shelley Hennig; Teen Wolf, Ouija), a cute normal teenager Skyping with her boyfriend Mitch (Moses Storm). They playfully joke about blue balls and virginity and make plans for prom night when they are ambushed on a group Skype call by a couple of their friends…along with a mystery caller who joined the group. What’s weird is that this mystery caller must have answered for Mitch and Blaire, who was in the middle of a strip tease when the call was answered.
The group (Matt, Val, Adam, Jess, Ken) considers the mystery caller to be a hacker. But things get immediately more disturbing when Mitch and Blaire begin to receive harassing messages from Laura’s Facebook account (or whoever the hacker is)–so Blaire “unfriends” her account.
This hacker begins to type messages via the others’ accounts and uses their accounts (like Facebook) to post incriminating photos of each other, all the while insisting that it is, in fact, the deceased Laura. Conceptually, this may not sound so cool or edgy, but all this is happening in “real time”–so 90 minutes to us viewers is 90 minutes in the lives of the characters–and Laura threatens that if Blaire hangs up all her friends will die.
The only hokey thing about this movie are the deaths. While I giggled with satisfaction at the blender scene, the scene is choppy as if from poor internet signal.
This may annoy some viewers but I liked the flavor and it allowed this low budget flick work for me. Evidently Laura’s vengeful spirit is possessing those who slandered who one by one, and makes them kill themselves. She also gets them to turn on each other, playing vicious mind games with them.
Who’s up for a game of Never Have I Ever?
It’s all a little juvenile. But then, that’s simply the age group of the protagonists. And I must say how nice it is to see horror victims behaving in ways that largely make sense. They may not think of everything we would, but they are in tough situations which makes their absent-mindedness all too credibly human. What’s more is that they use cell phones, texting, Google searches, Facebook, Youtube, Skype and Gmail…making this the opposite of the communicative vacuum that is the “cabin in the woods” scenario.
I was especially impressed at the nuance in Mitch and Blaire’s message typing; the pauses, the deletions and rewrites, the delays while thinking about how to word something or whether or not to click send, even the scrambling between message boards and Facebook chats. It all felt very believable, very normal–but panicked. You really need to see it to understand, but this simple thing (i.e., the depiction of “typing messages” in a movie) has perhaps never been done better. This doesn’t feel anything like found footage horror, but something else altogether. I almost want to call it social media horror or console horror–“techno-horror.”
This neither scary nor gory movie was somehow VERY engaging to me–and I’m an over-analytical guy in his mid-30s. I’ve got to say, if you can get me interested in a film that takes place entirely on a girl’s computer monitor about a bunch of teenagers on a group Skype call turned-highway-to-Hell, then you’ve succeeded as a filmmaker. These kids all did a great job and so did the director and writing team!
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John’s Horror Corner: Goodnight Mommy (2014), the story of a mother scorned by her children’s distrust…or children scorned by an evil imposter!
MY CALL: This Austrian film is slow but stimulating, delicate yet brutal, and simultaneously sympathetic and cold. Some may comfortably pick a side to trust, but I found my sympathies indivisible across the tortured family. I’d call that a victory despite this film’s blatant premature predictability and a “great reveal” that falls flat.
MORE MOVIES LIKE Goodnight Mommy: The Uninvited (2009), The Visit (2015), Hide and Seek (2005), Orphan (2009) and Identity (2003), all of which do a better job at maintaining their mystery until the right time.
HOW YOU CAN WATCH IT: I saw this for free with my Amazon Prime Subscription.
Ok. Just to start out, I’d like to warn you that I confidently had this movie figured out after 12 minutes. No joke. I’m normally good at things like that–but in this case I think I was given a little too much a little too soon to piece things together a bit too prematurely. Now, hey, I still enjoyed this film. But something like this could spoil some people’s movie experience. On with the review…
When first meet the identical twins, Lukas and Elias (Lukas and Elias Schwarz), they are refreshingly playing outside as young boys once did before the advent of videogame consoles, Netflix and the internet. They are clearly the best of friends and do everything together from hide and seek to burping contests on their large family farm estate in the countryside.
After returning home to recover from a terrible accident that initially goes completely unexplained, their unrecognizably bandaged mother (Susanne Wuest) is not greeted as warmly as she’d like–hardly a kind word is exchanged after the boys coldly deny her so much as a welcome home hug. Clearly any children would be shocked to see their mother’s face obscured by gauze. But this is more than that. In that moment, Mommy earns audience sympathy while being dehumanized in the boys’ eyes. It is evident that the boys doubt that this is, in fact, their mother standing before them.
Mommy makes her best effort to return to normal, but something is off. One twin (perhaps more disrespectfully than fearfully?) doesn’t speak directly to Mommy but rather whispers in his brother’s ear and, as a result, he is treated unfavorably.
More things hint that something is off. Mommy insists that she will not see visitors, the boys refer to what dad lets them do but he is never seen or mentioned otherwise, and Mommy essentially never even acknowledges the other brother as if implementing some form of extreme silent treatment. The boys’ somewhat surreal dreams convey the intensity of their distrust and other little hints (or red herrings?) abound, but I won’t ruin any of it for you.
As the story endures, the boys’ distrust only amplifies and so accordingly does Mommy’s impatience for their acceptance–which is never directly addressed. Their fantasies depict her as a something monstrous and inhuman–meanwhile they literally pray for the return of their “real” mother. Ultimately, the boys and Mommy turn to extreme measures and the film shifts from psychologically uneasy to brutal.
The greatest fault of this film–other than its blatant predictability–was that when the time came for it to reveal the truth, it just sort of “tells us.” As a whole the film still worked for me, and I’d even recommend it to anyone in search of something different from the horror genre; a change of pace. But realize that to some, this flaw may not be considered as forgivable as it was to me. Furthermore, I was delighted by the editing, cinematography and splendid acting. This was the first feature film for writer/director team Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala and I’m thrilled to see what they do next. There are some intense scenes, just a few with blood, mostly involving the threat or act of domestic violence. But we delve briefly into torture porn during the dental floss, cockroach and super glue scenes.
This film is slow but stimulating, delicate yet brutal, and simultaneously sympathetic and cold. Some may comfortably pick whom to trust, but I found my sympathies indivisible across the tortured family. I’d call that a victory.
For a less favorable, critical-but-fair second opinion on this film–just to hear both sides–check out this review [CLICK HERE].
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SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!
SPOILERS ABOUND!!!!!
Goodnight Mommy is beautifully filmed horror movie that prefers looking awesome over offering anything that makes the violence redeemable. It is empty calories disguised as art house cinema and is getting a lot of attention because Austria submitted it as their Best Foreign Language entry for the Academy Awards. Watching Goodnight Mommy felt like slow walk into a spiked wall that is 200 yards directly in front of you. You see the spiked wall off in the distance so there is no surprise as you inch closer and closer. I knew exactly where Goodnight Mommy was going and despite all the fantastic cinematography and new horror elements it felt familiar.
Normally, I am down for intelligent and critically loved horror but nothing in this film worked for me. It felt like a midnight film met a pretentious (and talented) film student and formed a hybrid that tried to be clever. It bums met out that it has been overshadowing gems like Spring, Creep and Housebound because they are all much more ambitious and earnest. Over the last two years I’ve written copious amounts about the indie horror boom and loved movies like Bone Tomahawk, Under the Skin and The Babadook. Those movies have a heart and soul and presented their indie horror ideas with clarity and a lack of pretentiousness.
Goodnight Mommy tells the story of a mother returning to her remote country home after facial reconstruction. She is welcomed by her two kids named Lukas and Elias who spend their days patrolling the countryside and burning cockroaches to death. The mother refuses to acknowledge Lukas and only feeds and talks to Elias. At this point it should become painfully obvious that there is only one kid and I was surprised to learn that people didn’t see the twist coming. I am still amazed because I never pick up on twists and I noticed this twist two minutes in. I actually thought it was so obvious that the real twist would be that Lukas was actually alive and the mom was a total jerk. However, that wasn’t the case we get a bunch of mom torture.
Poor lady.
I totally understand the cool Austrain vibe and adherence to patience but it all felt too obligatory. If you want to watch a movie about body dismemberment I recommend the film Cheap Thrills. It is a ballsy and tough little film about escalating dares. The villains keep their mystery and the two participants are likable and actually grow on you. The violence feels warranted because the filmmakers created a movie where you like the people and their motives seem plausible. It doesn’t gloss itself up or feel too cold because the movie has a purpose.
Goodnight Mommy is artificial in almost every aspect and that prevented me from caring about it. If you are into midnight horror films gussied up in an arthouse veneer you will love Goodnight Mommy. The violence is nasty and the build up is extreme and will most certainly satiate your need to see super glue used creatively.
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