Goodnight Mommy

The first feature by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala came out of a family tie: Franz is the long time partner of producer Ulrich Seidl, and Fiala is Seidl’s nephew. The two grew close when Franz and Seidl hired Fiala to babysit their sons, and found a shared taste for horror. Seidl produced it. Its German title, Ich seh, Ich seh, comes from the children’s rhyme for I spy: I see, I see what you do not see. Who can see what is the film’s own subject. Shooting took place in summer 2013 in a house near Haugschlag, in Lower Austria’s Waldviertel. Susanne Wuest plays the mother; the twins are Elias and Lukas Schwarz, brothers from Gaishorn am See. Martin Gschlacht won the 2015 European Film Award for cinematography. At the 2016 Austrian Film Awards it turned 6 nominations into 5 wins, for film, direction, cinematography, makeup and production design, missing only screenplay; it also took the 2015 Méliès d’Or. Austria submitted it to the Academy for foreign language film; it was not nominated. A good fit if you want dread built from closed blinds, an imposed rule of silence and children’s games, and do not mind guessing the end early. Not for viewers who cannot sit through the tying down and the burning in the last act.