The decade’s best horror film is back — in the worst form

polygon.com:

It might be unfair to compare remakes to their source films, but it’s also unavoidable for people who care about movies. While the common Hollywood lore says American audiences refuse to read subtitles, and English-language remakes open the film to broader audiences, it’s also true that a certain portion of the audience for any remake is made up of fans who want to see what a film has gained or lost in a second translation to the screen.

Remakes often lose something in the update process, but horror films seem to suffer more than most. There are outliers, like Let the Right One In’s competent American remake Let Me In. But the reason that one works well only calls attention to the missteps of other remakes. Let Me In pulls from John Ajvide Lindqvist’s source novel as much as it takes from the original Swedish film. It maintains the original’s mood and tension, but The Batman and Cloverfield director Matt Reeves also didn’t set out to pay homage to Let the Right One In. Though his film isn’t as unwaveringly brilliant as the imported version of the story, Let Me In is a worthy horror film unto itself.

But sometimes remakes go spectacularly wrong. On the extreme end of the spectrum, there’s a new poster child for how not to remake a movie: the American version of Goodnight Mommy.

The original Austrian horror film Goodnight Mommy was released in 2015 after a long, heralded festival run across the globe. The debut narrative feature from writer-directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz is a brazen, unflinching horror film coming from a country not known for its horror industry. The Austrian cinematic landscape isn’t completely free from the dark side of film, but it’s more firmly known for comedy and historic dramas.