The Latest Unnecessary American Remake Is Here, In First Trailer for Amazon’s Goodnight Mommy

It feels like it’s been a little while since the last shameless, shot-for-shot remake of a classic horror film from abroad, but the wait is now over: The first trailer for the American version of Goodnight Mommy is here. Starring Naomi Watts, and twins Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti of Big Little Lies, and directed by Matt Sobel (Take Me To The River) the film is slated as an Amazon Prime Video original, debuting on Sept. 16, 2022. You can see that first trailer below.

The original Goodnight Mommy was released in 2014, an Austrian psychological horror film directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, who are at least on board as executive producers of this version. The story revolves around a young pair of twin boys who go to visit their mother shortly after she’s received some sort of expansive cosmetic surgery, requiring her face to be entirely covered by bandages while it heals. That appearance, coupled with her odd behavior, eventually leads the boys to begin to suspect that this person caring for them may not be their real mother after all, which leads down a path to a rather spectacular conclusion. Goodnight Mommy is a tense, nail-biting triumph, and features on our list of the 100 best horror movies of all time.

The American version, meanwhile, looks pretty much the same—more of a reproduction than a “reimagining,” at least judging from the trailer below. Although we don’t doubt the skill of Watts, it feels like a case where a remake will struggle to justify its own existence, beyond “people don’t like to read subtitles!”

Perhaps, at the very least, the release of this version of Goodnight Mommy will lead more viewers in the direction of the original, as the (admittedly great) Let Me In did for Let the Right One In. Check out the Goodnight Mommy trailer below.