Another one of those American remakes of a standout foreign horror film that does things like stripping the original of its more brutal moments and getting dumped out onto a streaming service to make it more palatable to a wider, English-speaking audience. Yet, while the tale has lost some of its bite due to the more sanitized violence and cheaper Western scare tactics, it’s not all of the sudden any less interesting. If anything, it might arguably be a slight improvement narrative-wise due to removing a few of the hints from its predecessor that, while still managing to fool my dumb self, led to a lot of others correctly guessing the big twist before it arrived and allowing the possible imposter mother to seem less like an idiot by providing context for her actions that give the viewer more of a reason to doubt both parties. These minor writing refinements are a bit of a double-edged sword however, as by making the pseudo-antagonist’s decisions logical to the audience they inadvertently removed the story’s cautionary message. In hindsight, the frustration viewers felt when they realized just how easy it would have been to avoid that entire scenario was cleverly used to hammer home the theme at the core of the movie. Realizing that through watching this has retroactively given me a greater respect for its forerunner. Even without the moral however, the mystery is strong enough to carry the experience. So it ends up being aspects such as the lower production values and overall tamer content that are the real faults. The somewhat cheap visuals, out of place soundtrack, and the fact that outside of a particularly hard to watch sequence of child abuse nothing all that shocking happens cause this to have a straight-to-DVD vibe that brought to mind stuff like Mercy with Chandler Riggs (why that specifically I have no idea). This extends to the acting to a degree as well. Obviously seasoned actress Naomi Watts is fine, but those around her are, not bad, only far less convincing.  When it comes down to what the best version is, the answer is undeniably the first one from Austria. It packs a gut punch and takeaway you simply won’t find here. That being said, it’s not an absolute tragedy that this is going to be the way a lot of people will watch Goodnight Mommy. There’s no reason for anyone already familiar with the prior iteration to check this out as it doesn’t do anything terribly new, but for those who either can’t be bothered to read subtitles or have some serious issue with the sight of blood the novelty and intrigue of its premise made the jump so this serves as a fine, albeit weaker alternative.