Karlovy Vary Review: Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's Stylishly Sick 'Goodnight Mommy'

The stealthiness of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's "Goodnight Mommy," which creeps around making the noise of someone trying to make no noise, is a good parallel for the sort of life the film has had since its Venice premiere: quietly building both arthouse buzz and picking up genre admirers while it makes the festival rounds. Catching up to it at its Karlovy Vary International Film Festival berth this week, it's easy to see what the fuss is about: it's a resonant, atmospheric horror film that treats its genre and its audience with unusual respect, before escalating in its last moments to a brilliantly uncompromised finale. This is deserving of special mention because in walking the line between indie/arthouse and genre, like David Robert Mitchell's "It Follows," for example, or even something like "The Babadook" which in themes of the potential monstrousness of motherhood more closely parallels "Goodnight Mommy," there is often the...