Goodnight Mommy (2022)

Goodnight Mommy (2022) is the kind of slow-burn horror that gets under your skin not with jump scares, but with the creeping feeling that something in this house is fundamentally wrong. Matt Sobel stages the tension like a tightening knot—quiet rooms, strict rules, and small, unsettling details—while Naomi Watts anchors it all with a performance that’s equal parts wounded and frighteningly unreadable. The film’s greatest pleasure is its mood: a chilly, intimate thriller that keeps you leaning forward, trying to decide whether you’re watching a family tragedy, a nightmare, or both at once. It may not satisfy viewers who want nonstop shocks or who cherish the 2014 original’s bite, but if you’re in the mood for polished, eerie genre entertainment with real acting at its core, this one is worth the lights-off watch.

Goodnight Mommy (2022) clearly wants to be a chilly, claustrophobic mystery about grief and mistrust, with Naomi Watts doing her best to sell a mother who feels both fragile and frightening. The problem is it often feels like a polished exercise rather than a truly unsettling descent—pacing drags, the tension comes in fits and starts, and the story choices play safer than the premise deserves. If you’re expecting a relentlessly disturbing psychological horror with sharp ambiguity, you may find this version too softened and a bit “why does this exist?” compared to what it’s remaking. Still, if you like slow-burn domestic dread, strong central acting, and a clean, controlled atmosphere over raw intensity, it can work as a decent one-night thriller.