Let me preface this by saying that the twist in this movie is so fucking obvious and stupid - I literally knew exactly how it was going to play out from the first ten minutes, and if anyone leaves the theater feeling shocked by the big revelation I question their sanity. The movie itself is decent but I didn't find it incredibly terrifying or anything of the sort - it does certainly do its best to make the viewer uncomfortable though. It has a great atmosphere and does a nice job of developing tension. The cinematography is gorgeous. The movie turns into a bit of a riff on the torture porn formula during the final third and I didn't think this segment worked as well as the rest of the film. The whole thing isn't exactly a fun watch - it reminded me a lot of Funny Games actually. The performances are good. I don't know if it was the filmmaker's intention or because I guessed the twist ending but from the very beginning I 100% sympathized with the mother - she didn't do anything wrong. The kids were little shits and I wanted them to die. It's not a bad movie at all but after the insane hype this one received I was a bit disappointed. C+

I've read some very bad reviews about this.

I thought this lived up to that great trailer. Sure you've seen the twist before in plenty of other movies, but I loved the atmosphere of this movie. It's drenched in dread and although it doesn't really get violent until the third act you could feel the tension in every scene. The kids were good, the mom was great and the cinematography/camerawork was on point.

This highly praised Austrian suspense film is well-constructed, gorgeous even, on nearly every technical level, but it left me empty and a shade frustrated. The story turns on adolescent brothers (Elias and Lukas Schwarz) whose idyllic summer is disrupted by the return of their mother (Susanne Wuest) after reconstructive facial surgery. The children are uncomfortable around this distant, bandage-swathed disciplinarian and begin to suspect she may be an impostor. With each day, the atmosphere in their luxurious and secluded home grows more tense. Can they trust their mother? Is she safe around them?

Simply put, I regard this film as around an hour and 10 minutes of modestly creepy miscellany (a dead animal! a dream sequence! a field on fire! a graveyard!) situated in a vacuum and doled out at a snail's pace, then a 30-minute blast of borderline torture pornography and a fairly predictable twist. Yes, the cast is strong and in tune with the subjective space within which they must play, and the 35-millimeter cinematography is as elegant and Haneke-brand icy as the house where the action unfolds. But I found it hard to detect a pulse beneath the veneer. The characters constantly serve the contrived screenplay, so I never invested in their fate or felt scared for (or by) them. And once the film's violent and sentimental final cards are dealt, the lengthy and deliberate buildup feels arbitrary in retrospect, its opacity more a shrewd gambit to earn festival-circuit laurels than an organic and earned preamble.

C+

The story is rather amusing when considered from an objective place above the action: after being away from her profoundly traumatized son for a while due to major surgery, a famous and wealthy television presenter decides to return home and instantly adopt this tough-love distance to discourage him from obsessing over his dead brother...while still covered in creepy bandages and without any in-person assistance from a loved one or a mental-health professional (not even after finding a dead cat floating in an aquarium in the living room).

Who was even watching him while she was in the hospital?

She also does a notably poor job arguing her case when tied up, barely drawing at all on her shared history with her son. No, "Remember when you were five?" anecdotes. This helps the audience, of course, because it allows us to continue to entertain the notion she may be a liar or a menace.

hanekean