Goodnight Mommy, Watts is ‘mommy’ of your nightmares

Dark psychological thriller Goodnight Mommy has traces of Stephen King’s Misery.

Australian actor Naomi Watts is superb as the mother, as are the American twins Cameron Crovetti and Nicholas Crovetti as her sons Elias and Lucas

Goodnight Mommy (MA15+)
Amazon Prime
★★★½

When it comes to movie baddies, some things change and some things stay the same. With villains, the then-Soviet Union topped the most wanted list for a while. In more recent times, it’s been the Middle East or any country ending in “stan”.

With villainous places, there’s more permanence. Attics, cellars and barns should be avoided. Each has its own horror movie: The Attic (2007), The Cellar (2014) and The Barn (2016).

The barn is off limits for adolescent twin brothers Elias and Lucas in the chilling thriller Goodnight Mommy. So is their mother’s bedroom and study. They are also told no visitors are allowed and the window blinds must be lowered at all times.

Whether they take in any of this is uncertain, considering the strange sight standing before them: their mother, her head and face wrapped in surgical bandages.

This is an American film so she is a mommy but she looks like a mummy.

Australian actor Naomi Watts is superb as the mother, as are the American twins Cameron Crovetti and Nicholas Crovetti as her sons Elias and Lucas. Or alleged sons, as we are soon led to suspect. The mother lives on a property in non-neighbourhood America (the movie was shot in New Jersey). The boys are dropped there by their father, who is separated from his wife.

The mother tells the boys they had to stay with dad for a bit while she had a minor “procedure”. There are hints she is a film star.

“I hate that you have to see me like this,’’ she says. “But there is nothing to be afraid of. It’s still me under here.”

Elias, who seems the bolder twin, soon doubts this. “She”, as he starts to refer to her, is not behaving like their mother. She drinks and smokes, for a start. She lashes out at the boys.

There’s a great scene – Watts is so good in it – where she, alone in her bedroom, glass of wine in hand, loosens her mask, blasts Edwyn Collins’s A Girl Like You from the stereo and does a semi-strip tease in front of the wardrobe mirror. Elias, peeking into her room, watches.

The title goes to the twins’ nightly bedtime song, You Are My Sunshine. The movie opens with an old home video of her singing it to them.

Masked mommy, however, refuses to sing this goodnight song. “You’re too old for songs,’’ she tells them. Elias wonders, “What if it’s because she doesn’t know the words?”

He decides she’s an impostor. He thinks this is a case where parental guidance should not be followed. So the boys do go into the barn and don’t like what they see.

Then they hear their mother on the phone. “How much longer do I have to keep pretending?” she asks. Soon after she tells the twins, “You think I want this?”

It’s at this point that we start to wonder who is the victim. What is she “pretending”? And we remember that twins, like attics, cellars and barns, can be threatening (the girls in The Shining, Jeremy Irons’s gynaecologists in Dead Ringers, Tom Hardy’s gangster Krays in Legend, to name a few).

The boys start out hiding in fear from their “mother”. Then Elias resolves to act. What he does recalls the 1990 movie Misery, based on the Stephen King novel.

This 91-minute movie, directed by Matt Sobel and written by Kyle Warren, is a remake of the 2014 Austrian film Ich Seh, Ich Seh (I See, I See but retitled Goodnight Mommy in international markets).

It is not as shocking as the original, directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, but it is still a dark psychological thriller. There are unexpected twists and the performances by the three stars are outstanding. The ending reconfigures everything and will send viewers to Google in search of answers. I’m not sure they are there.

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The Inner Cage (R18+)
In cinemas as part of the St Ali Italian Film Festival www.italianfilmfestival.com.au
★★★½

Early in the Italian prison drama The Inner Cage, an inmate says to a guard, “It is hard being in prison, isn’t it?” The guard replies that he is not in prison but both he and the inmate know that’s only a half-truth.

This moment sets up a central plot point — in jail, where is the line in the sand between jailed and jailer, and can it be moved? — and is the start of a tremendous acting duel between Toni Servillo and Silvio Orlando.

Servillo, who starred in Paolo Sorrentino’s superb Oscar-winner The Great Beauty (2013), is the guard, Gaetano Gargiuolo. Orlando is the inmate, Carmine Lagioia. They are of similar age and each has been around the block a few times.

The prison is a 19th-century hell hole. All concrete and bars. The muted colours — at times it feels like a black and white film — emphasise the still air — to use the Italian title, Ariaferma — of claustrophobic life on the inside.

The place is in the process of being shut down, its inmates sent elsewhere, but a problem at another prison means 12 have to remain behind for a few more days, watched over by six guards.

This desperate dozen is soon joined by a young man, Fantaccini (Pietro Giuliano), a recidivist who is a suicide risk. The prison doctor has left the premises.

The authorities also decide that, as it’s only a few days, to suspend all privileges, including visitors, and to close the kitchen.

The latter is the first match to a potential powder keg. This is Italy after all! When the trucked-in pre-cooked meals are warmed up and served, one of the inmates yells, “not even dogs would eat this shit”. A hunger strike starts, led by Lagioia.

This 117-minute drama, directed and co-written by Leonardo di Costanzo, centres on a hostile environment that could explode at any moment. Thirteen inmates and only six guards.

Yet, like that line in the sand, the us versus them division is not clear cut.

Gargiuolo, the most experienced guard, is in charge, but some of his colleagues disagree with his approach.

The prisoners, too, are no band of brothers. One, Arzano (Nicola Sechi), is described as a “monster” by the others. Why each man is in jail is not spelled out. Arzano, we suspect, is a child molester. Lagioia is an ageing mobster.

There is a superbly acted scene where Lagioia tells Gargiuolo that they have a fair bit in common. The guard dismisses this in a quietly powerful speech. While in some ways he is right, in others he is not.

It’s a single moment that encapsulates why this film won best screenplay and Orlando won best actor at the 2022 Italian Oscars, the David di Donatello Awards.

This movie is in cinemas around the country as part of the St Ali Italian Film Festival. In one of the oddities of classification, it is exempt under the cultural clause — it is being shown at a film festival — but carries an 18+ warning. If this film goes on to a general cinema release, I think the classification will be M or MA15+ at the most.

I have also seen one of the festival’s headline films, Nostalgia, a Naples-set homecoming story directed by Mario Martone and starring Pierfrancesco Favino. It is well worth seeing.

However I decided to review The Inner Cage to draw attention to a non-headline film, and also because I am a fan of prison dramas. I think one of Tom Hanks’s best performances is as the death row guard in The Green Mile (1999). Like that film, this one tells a grimly familiar story in an interestingly different way.

Silvio Orlando and Toni Servillo in The Inner Cage.