Goodnight Mommy is a suspense/thriller/horror film that premiered on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, September 16, 2022. It is an American remake of the 2014 Austrian film of the same name and follows the story of twin brothers Elias and Lukas, who visit their mother and find her with a bandaged face.

Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers.

Amazon Prime Video’s synopsis of Goodnight Mommy reads:

Naomi Watts plays the mother with a suspiciously covered face, while real-life twins Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti essay the on-screen pair of twins in Goodnight Mommy.

While Watts’ bandaged face is a good distraction from the real theme that the film deals with, the ghost in Goodnight Mommy is not the physical manifestation of an extra-terrestrial being but the ghosts of one’s past. Here, Elias’ past haunts him, and he is reluctant to let go of it because he does not want to be alone.

Read on to find out what happened in Goodnight Mommy, currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Goodnight Mommy begins with twins Elias and Lukas being driven to their mother’s place by their father. The parents are separated, with the film barely delving into the reason for their separation.

As Elias and Lukas arrive at an eerily isolated house, they meet their mother with a heavily bandaged face. When asked, she said she had a cosmetic surgery for a “fresh start.” Although the boys cannot comprehend the logic behind their mother’s statement, they don’t take it up further.

While Elias seems to be the only one who suspects their mother’s covered face, Lukas hardly seems bothered. However, Lukas gradually becomes the one to guess that the woman in their house is an imposter pretending to be their mother.

In addition to a covered face, the woman starts to impose rules on the boys, which makes them suspect her further. For instance, despite being asked to stay away from the barn behind the house, the brothers go there only to be caught by their mother.

What started as mere suspicion gets concretized into the belief that the woman with them was an imposter after Elias overheard a conversation between the mother and an unknown person. The mother sounds frustrated and notes that Elias and Lukas are always together and that she can’t pretend anymore.

Elias shared this information with Lukas, and the brothers decided to spy on their mother. They placed a walkie-talkie under her bed just as she walked in. An ambushed Elias found the drawing that he had given their mother upon their arrival in the dustbin of her room. While he was upset to see it, he took it as a confirmation that it was an imposter that they were staying with.

Several instances of violence suggested that the woman was an imposter. For instance, Watts’ character takes the boys’ phone (which they say is their father’s old phone) and washes it down the sink because she does not want them to spend too much time on it.

On another occasion, she breaks into her sons’ room, drags Elias out of his bed and into the washroom, and pours cold water over him to get him to admit that she is their real mother. Just after this episode, the mother is in her room, peeling off her skin and revealing a black figure underneath.

The same night, the brothers left the house in the dark and sought refuge in an uninhabited place, only to be found by the police and returned to their mother, who had now taken off her mask. The boys found that she looked like their real mother.

The mother thanked the police and addressed their concerns about her being an imposter. We also get to know that she is a famous personality, but not sure for what reason. Later that night, the mother wiped off her make-up in her room, but her face was not revealed.

The following day, the boys decide to leave but return and bind their mother’s hands and legs to bed posts with cello tape. A confrontation begins when Elias asks her to tell them about their real mother. The restrained woman keeps claiming that she is their real mother but to no avail.

Elias told her that their mother’s eyes were green in color, while the alleged imposter’s eyes were blue. The mother responded and insisted that she uses green colored contact lenses for her work and that her eyes are naturally blue. Lukas checks the mother’s purse and tells Elias that he found no lenses.

When Elias showed her the torn drawing he had recovered from her room, the mother admitted that she had not been herself and that she would do better. She also asked Elias not to always listen to Lukas, who was constantly asking Elias to leave.

Elias suddenly finds himself in a fix between his mother and Lukas. Giving in to his brother, Elias stuffed a sock in his mother’s mouth and taped it before leaving.

Meanwhile, the same cops from the previous night arrived and expressed the need to speak with the boys’ mother. Elias dealt with them and lied by saying his mother was not home. Watts’ character tries to raise an alarm but to no avail.

While waiting for an Uber to drive home, Elias tells Lukas that he forgot his toothbrush and rushes back inside. He finds his mother’s purse and the green-colored lenses she mentioned earlier. Elias realizes that Lukas lied to him and confronts him.

Without a proper response, Elias rushes back to his mother’s room and frees her. She tells him something is wrong with Lukas, who bangs on the door and then stops.

When Elias goes downstairs with his mother, he cannot find Lukas. The mother takes him to the barn and upstairs, where a play area is set up. She asks a reluctant Elias to look at a black point on the wooden wall and consoles him that it was not his fault.

We learned that Elias had accidentally shot Lukas last winter, killing the latter. Elias breaks down and finds it difficult to come to terms with reality.

In a rage, he pushes his mother, who hits the ground. The lantern that she holds breaks, and the barn catches fire. Elias looks at his unconscious mother, witnesses the raging fire, and runs out of the barn with his mother left to die inside.

The fire swallows the barn as Elias watches. He is then greeted by the hallucinations of both Lukas and his mother. Goodnight Mommy ended with Elias hugging them both.

Goodnight Mommy is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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