In This Episode
Halle and Alison debate who is mommy and how did she get such a nice house while ruining Goodnight Mommy (2014).
TRANSCRIPT
[theme music]: If scary movies give you dread, keep you up late night in bed. Here’s a podcast that will help you ease your mind. We’ll explain the plot real nicely, then we’ll talk about what’s frightening so you never have to have a spooky time. It’s Ruined. [music plays]
Halle Kiefer: Oh, hello. Welcome to Ruined. I’m Halle.
Alison Leiby: And I’m Alison.
Halle Kiefer: And this is a horror movie podcast where we ruin a movie every week. Just for you.
Alison Leiby: Just for you.
Halle Kiefer: Alison, how you doing? Anything horrifying happening to you this week?
Alison Leiby: I’m good. I don’t have any horrors happening. I have something I would like to say that I liked. If that’s okay.
Halle Kiefer: Oh okay, I’ll allow it.
Alison Leiby: I know this is a few we’re recording a few weeks ahead, so by then maybe everybody will have watched. But Jury Duty is so good on Amazon and I loved it so much. And we know that I hate pranks. And I was like, I hope this isn’t like some [laughter] mean thing where we’re just like making fun of some guy for ten episodes and it’s truly the opposite of that. It’s like genuinely the sweetest, nicest thing. I cried at the end, but also laughed the whole way through. I just loved it—
Halle Kiefer: Ooh okay.
Alison Leiby: —so, so much and it’s not scary. [laughs]
Halle Kiefer: It seems almost like a sweetie pie version of Nathan for You. Like, it’s almost like—
Alison Leiby: Yeah and it has the vibe of like if Curb Your Enthusiasm was less cynical in terms of what the comedy is like.
Halle Kiefer: Okay.
Alison Leiby: It’s all very small. It’s all very it’s just like the way somebody is opening a door is funny. Like it’s like that. But like, but we’re not making a whole thing about it. We’re just kind of like letting these characters, like, have a lot of fun and this really nice guy and there’s so many moments where you’re like, oh, I mean, I would die for Ronald. I just want to make sure that Ronald is protected at all costs for the rest of all of our lives. He is everything he like gave me faith that like, not everybody is terrible.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah.
Alison Leiby: And yet when we read the news or just interact on the Internet or anything these days, I feel like I’m just like, I guess everybody’s just like a cynical piece of shit at best. And he just is not that at all. And it was genuinely like inspiring to watch somebody kind on television. [laughs]
Halle Kiefer: I’m so glad. I do want to know, like, how so obviously, yes, I can see there’s just this one person who’s a real—
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: —juror. How do they explain it to him? Like what was [both speaking] how they were shooting it?
Alison Leiby: The whole final episode they walk through like how they made it work.
Halle Kiefer: Wow, okay.
Alison Leiby: Because I was like, I was like, how did he not at some point be like, why would this? And like.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah.
Alison Leiby: They did. They do a nice job of like explaining how they pulled it off at the end and walk through—
Halle Kiefer: Okay.
Alison Leiby: —like all the different rooms they’re in and not just to be like, yeah, see, this was and he’s like, oh my God. Like, I thought, it’s it’s so good. It’s just—
Halle Kiefer: Okay, good.
Alison Leiby: I can’t. I’ve watched it in one day and it’s all I want to talk about.
Halle Kiefer: That sounds really sweet.
Alison Leiby: I know that’s not scary, but it is like a nice antidote to the actual horrors existing in the world that we have to live in unfortunately.
Halle Kiefer: That sounds incredibly sweet.
Alison Leiby: Yes, it’s really cute.
Halle Kiefer: I’m so glad.
Alison Leiby: Any horrors in your world [laughs] or nice things that are opposite of horror?
Halle Kiefer: Nice things, horrible things. Just trying to write the movie we’re writing this week. And it has also, I want to be clear, we’re not that it would matter. We’re we’re recording this in April.
Alison Leiby: Oh, yes.
Halle Kiefer: In case there is a writer’s strike.
Alison Leiby: WGA please don’t take that as that. We’ve been doing any kind of work that we’re not supposed to be doing right now.
Halle Kiefer: We’re not. But yeah, the horror of the human mind.
Alison Leiby: Mm mm hmm.
Halle Kiefer: Running up against itself. And, you know, I just wish my brain was better and writing was easier. And it is it’s just hard to you know, we have many we I have been very fortunate. We’ve been very fortunate in our careers.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: And then they have a situation where it’s like, I’m the problem, it’s me.
Alison Leiby: It’s me.
Halle Kiefer: It’s me.
Alison Leiby: Yep.
Halle Kiefer: And I’m going to get through it. It’s going to be fine. Obviously, we’re going to get through it together.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: But yeah, I just.
Alison Leiby: It sucks.
Halle Kiefer: You know, it’s the we’ve chosen a life of struggle.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: And pain, but with great payoff occasionally.
Alison Leiby: Sometimes.
Halle Kiefer: And, you know, we’ll we’ll see what happens. But that’s the only horrifying thing to me is that like, oh, boy.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: Oh, boy.
Alison Leiby: We’re kind of we’re kind of like pre all of the horrors that come with summer or but like, things are just kind of fine right now.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah.
Alison Leiby: I mean aside from I mean, God well, God knows what’s actually happening in the news when anybody’s listening to this because there is always something terrible. But the general like, oh, the oppressive heat hasn’t arrived yet. And like in New York, like we’re still pre allergies and.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah, which is nice. I feel like—
Alison Leiby: A nice cozy moment before some shitty things barrel down on us. [laughs]
Halle Kiefer: And then other than that, I guess on the positive side, I’m preparing for pride.
Alison Leiby: Oh yeah.
Halle Kiefer: I’m planning out my entire month I’m planning out a month of looks.
Alison Leiby: Yes, looks, looks, looks.
Halle Kiefer: I have, making plans with friends from other cities. I am acquiring what I need to acquire. I’m very excited.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: And yeah, I just I love to get I love getting my hopes up, too. I love—
Alison Leiby: Yeah. It’s good to set your expectations wildly high.
Halle Kiefer: And I, and I always do. And I always will.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: And before we get into it, we just want to let you know we have a live show coming up on Sunday, May 21st at 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Eastern. And we are doing. Of course, for mommy issues months, we’re doing Evil Dead Rise.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: Mommy’s with the maggots now and we’ll be with you on momenthouse.com/ruined.
Alison Leiby: Dot co dot c o.
Halle Kiefer: Fuck, I fuck. Okay.
Alison Leiby: Moment.co, moment.co/ruined is where you can actually see the live show. I don’t know what the other website is, but please report back if you happen to visit it.
Halle Kiefer: If it’s porn I. You’re welcome.
Alison Leiby: You’re welcome. We should be giving you more porn and if you want it, we did the original Evil Dead, So please go listen to that episode before we hop into this one and make sure you get your tickets. It’s ten bucks. It’s up for 72 hours in case you can’t make it at seven or 4 p.m. or whatever time zone you live in on Sunday, May 21st. You have 72 hours to watch it. Merch, chat, drinking games, the whole nine. It’s going to be another fun one.
Halle Kiefer: So we’ll see you there. Well, not literally. You’ll see us there.
Alison Leiby: You’ll see us there.
Halle Kiefer: But we’ll know you’re there.
Alison Leiby: Maybe we see you too.
Halle Kiefer: Maybe we watch you all the time. Who’s to say? All right, let’s get into it.
Alison Leiby: Maybe the camera goes both ways.
Halle Kiefer: Okay. I don’t. Whatever. I, listen.
Alison Leiby: Okay, okay.
Halle Kiefer: I had not seen this week’s movie, which is the original 2014 version of Goodnight Mommy. There, of course, is a 2022 remake American remakes. We got to make remake everything that. But to be fair, our producer, Sabrina, said the remake was good. I’m going to be honest. This is a movie that I had not watched because of my I don’t know what you call this. I this. I’m sure there’s a term for it. I will. If it’s something I’m excited to see, I will put off seeing it forever.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: Sometimes I will genuinely not watch it.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: For example, I have not seen the last two episodes of Fleabag and I may never because I feel like there might be a time when I need to watch it and that’s the only thing that’s going to fulfill me.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: And so if I haven’t watched it, it’s waiting for me. And similarly, Goodnight Mommy. Everyone raved about this so much I felt like I’m going to hold off to a moment where I feels right, you know.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: I’m in the right mood. And it’s written and directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. I love I, I think. Well, speaking of say, yeah, the expectations. Like, I think maybe people just raved about it so much. I think if this had just come out or I found this on Shudder or whatever.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: Great. A very beautifully shot. Well-acted movie.
Alison Leiby: Yeah. Looks gorgeous.
Halle Kiefer: People were like, oh my God. And I guess we just do that with horror movies every time anything comes out, you know?
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: But I guess I got my hopes up and I enjoyed it. I think it’s a good film, but people talked about it at the time it came out, which is again 2014 like it was the second coming and it was, you know, I enjoyed it. It fits the theme. I’m glad that we’re eventually doing it, but people need to be a little more nuanced about how they talk about horror movies.
Alison Leiby: Yes, I agree. In general, with pop culture, like—
Halle Kiefer: Yeah.
Alison Leiby: —we’re too much of like everything is like. It’s either like it’s mother or it’s like the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Like, it’s like we need—
Halle Kiefer: Yes.
Alison Leiby: —to be able to be like, oh, I really liked this. I just don’t feel like it stuck the landing and, like, that’s an okay thing to say.
Halle Kiefer: Exactly. And we know how difficult it is to make anything.
Alison Leiby: My God.
Halle Kiefer: This is not a criticism of the filmmakers whatsoever.
Alison Leiby: No.
Halle Kiefer: But rather how we speak about things. Is so—
Alison Leiby: We live in extremes.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah. It’s so interesting as someone who feels basically nothing, most of the time.
Alison Leiby: Ever.
Halle Kiefer: It’s crazy to hear people get get worked up. But it’s good that you liked Jury Duty. And.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: It’s genuinely like something is so valuable.
Alison Leiby: Yes. And I feel like it’s very like I was like, oh, this feels rare.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah.
Alison Leiby: Like this feels like I feel like this isn’t just like a thing that it’s like, oh, we’re all talking about this. And thus it’s good. It’s like.
Halle Kiefer: Right.
Alison Leiby: No, I actually liked it so much that I want to talk about it.
Halle Kiefer: Yes.
Alison Leiby: Not the inverse of like everybody’s talking about. So I need to have an opinion. And that opinion has to be that it’s good because someone else said it’s good. I’m like, no, I just watched it and couldn’t stop.
Halle Kiefer: I’m glad. I’m glad to hear that because I agree.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: Genuine, genuine joy, genuine pleasure.
Alison Leiby: Rare.
Halle Kiefer: I think is so important right now.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: All right. So let us begin. We are, of course, doing Goodnight Mommy, we always like to have Alison watch the trailer. Alison, would you like to tell us how you felt about the trailer for, again, the original version of Goodnight Mommy?
Alison Leiby: Not good. [laughs]
Halle Kiefer: Mm hmm, yes.
Alison Leiby: Not gorgeous. I mean, gorgeously shot. But. When that large cockroach goes in her mouth and then she just—
Halle Kiefer: Yes.
Alison Leiby: —crunches on it. It’s a it’s a tough moment. And like all the other, it’s like it’s like I can see kind of what I think is going on here. And it is scary, but it’s like that part. I was like, mm mm.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah.
Alison Leiby: I don’t, no, no, no.
Halle Kiefer: I, I, you’re correct to, to think that. And there are so many gigantic cockroaches in this movie.
Alison Leiby: I did you. I wonder if this is in my seventh grade science class. There was like a, an aquarium.
Halle Kiefer: Oh.
Alison Leiby: An aquarium full of them and.
Halle Kiefer: You, that’s gnarly.
Alison Leiby: That’s the thing. But I don’t remember what we did with them.
Halle Kiefer: You ate them didn’t you Alison?
Alison Leiby: Mm they were like crunch, crunch, crunch.
Halle Kiefer: You can be honest with us.
Alison Leiby: Snack time.
Halle Kiefer: No, we had we had a guinea pig named Teflon that lived in our science class.
Alison Leiby: Oh.
Halle Kiefer: We didn’t have really writhing aquarium full of roaches.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: Like some sick fuck. Whatever sick fucking school you went to.
Alison Leiby: I hated it, it was like one of the worst things. I’m like, I’m like, why are we doing like, I have a true, like, no. No.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah. That’s like if like David Cronenberg high school.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: Like that kind of shit, like, oh, feeding the class pet is just a of a wriggling mass of cockroaches.
Alison Leiby: That you have to stick your hand in, and it comes out and it’s a toaster or like something truly insane.
Halle Kiefer: Whew. Yeah that’s a good one, a lot of roach stuff but they are and they are pet roaches in the movie and they’re the gigantic kind.
Alison Leiby: Yeah. They’re not just like a city roach.
Halle Kiefer: No. Yeah. And those. Because those you can get for free—
Alison Leiby: Yeah, they’re hanging around [both speaking] if you live in a city. They’re in your home.
Halle Kiefer: You can get them for free pennies on the dollar, live in New York get all the pet cockroaches you want pet mice? Pet cockroaches? Pet rats?
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: Pet pigeons. Madagascar hissing cockroaches.
Alison Leiby: Yes. Yes. The hissing ones.
Halle Kiefer: Are the kind that people tend to get [laughs] first—
Alison Leiby: It’s like having a lobster.
Halle Kiefer: But it must be like a lobster’s a little more cuddly. It has like a little more a little more heft to it. Like it feels like it would be like—
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: —holding a cat, but that it would pinch you. So.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: On Google the first question how much you pet cockroaches cost Alison you can usually get them for under $5 each. So.
Alison Leiby: Still seems steep. [laughs]
Halle Kiefer: You get $100, you get 20 cockroaches.
Alison Leiby: 20 roaches.
Halle Kiefer: I mean, that’s again, that’s a bargain if I’ve ever heard one.
Alison Leiby: That is, some, bulk shopping.
Halle Kiefer: And of course you always like to take a baseline. Scary for the film. Alison How scary to find the concept of another mother. It’s not mother. It’s some sort of other mother.
Alison Leiby: Other mother.
Halle Kiefer: Other mother.
Alison Leiby: It’s like I could guess [both speaking] it from the first minute of the trailer, I was like, well, that’s clearly isn’t their real mom.
Halle Kiefer: Or is it?
Alison Leiby: Or is it? But it reminded me of The Visit.
Halle Kiefer: Oh, yes. Yeah.
Alison Leiby: Where you’re like oh we’re children with an adult who we don’t have enough information on, that we just assume is our caregiver. And it’s like, mm mm. Go watch, listen to The Visit if you haven’t listened to that episode yet that I just spoiled for you.
Halle Kiefer: It’s been out.
Alison Leiby: Other mother is a scary idea.
Halle Kiefer: What would be your mother’s tell like if you were to meet an exact double of your mother, what would she do? And you’d immediately be like, mine would. I think mine would be if she were ever talk ill of Jazzercise.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: And I think if she ever were to willfully give me an idea for a gift to give her. If I met my mother.
Alison Leiby: Oh okay.
Halle Kiefer: And she suddenly was full of ideas for gifts, I’d be like, I am calling an exorcist.
Alison Leiby: Yes. I think that mine would be if we were shopping for clothes and she didn’t comment on everything [laughter] of being like either too expensive or too cheap or ugly. Like. [laughs]
Halle Kiefer: Yeah.
Alison Leiby: Like, like holding up a shirt and going, I don’t know who this is for. Someone else. That’s okay. It’s fine [laughs] just stop talking.
Halle Kiefer: And and you would know it at a glance if she just goes oh this is gorgeous.
Alison Leiby: It’s fun to shop with her, but it is. It is the tell.
Halle Kiefer: That’s so funny. We are. Well, let us begin. We are. Before we do, Alison, would you like to guess the twist in Goodnight Mommy.
[voice over]: Guess the twist.
Alison Leiby: I mean, I feel it’s cheap to guess that this isn’t real, Mommy.
Halle Kiefer: Well. So if it’s not the real mommy, who is it? Who is the mommy?
Alison Leiby: I, who is this woman or where is Mommy?
Halle Kiefer: Where is Mommy?
Alison Leiby: I think she killed. I think she is of the woods.
Halle Kiefer: Ooh okay.
Alison Leiby: She has killed Mommy. Mommy is dead in the woods. And she—
Halle Kiefer: I love a Mommy of the woods.
Alison Leiby: —she has grown from the ground and taking over because. Now she wants to live in a house.
Halle Kiefer: Yes. [laughter] I love that. And also, what a pure and simple. A beautiful.
Alison Leiby: Yes. Clean.
Halle Kiefer: Reason to want to kill a mommy and become her. All right. Let us begin. We will now ruin. Goodnight Mommy. Alison, we open on a white mother with her brood of white children. They are all wearing dirndls. This is a an Austrian film. And they are singing a lullaby. A lullaby to goodnight. And being an American I, of course, immediately thought of Nazis.
Alison Leiby: Yes. Same.
Halle Kiefer: And so I don’t know if that’s intentionally if they were if this is an in Austrian.
Alison Leiby: I don’t know.
Halle Kiefer: Iconography that makes a different sense to them. But to me as an American, I saw that and I thought.
Alison Leiby: Nazis.
Halle Kiefer: Well, first of all, Nazis.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: But it also because it is the Sound of Music, you know it immediately. And I was like, well, who are they running up against? The Nazis. So there is something there. The white mother, the correct mother. The mother.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: That is right. And if so, how was she acting versus the wrong mother? So that’s immediately top of mind.
Alison Leiby: Okay great.
Halle Kiefer: And then we cut to a little guy running around through the corn.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: And he’s tackled by his twin brother and who wears this sort of handmade green cardboard monster mask that a kid would wear if the kid was a worked in the art department of a film studio. Like, it’s beautifully made.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: And these kids are between the ages of, I’m gonna say, seven and nine.
Alison Leiby: Yeah, that feels right.
Halle Kiefer: I’m gonna say seven.
Alison Leiby: Go with seven.
Halle Kiefer: They’re on the younger side, their definitely in elementary school. And you know, his brother yells, tag you’re it and they’re off going through the corn. You may even call them children of the corn, Alison.
Alison Leiby: I mean. Some might.
Halle Kiefer: They also walk on and I hate to bring this up, but they they walk on rocks that sort of are squishy and move around and as if they’re walking over a sinkhole or a bog.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: And I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
Alison Leiby: No, that’s not from this world.
Halle Kiefer: [laughs] I mean, it may be from Austria, but it’s certainly not from our world.
Alison Leiby: No.
Halle Kiefer: Which is the US of fucking A.
Alison Leiby: America.
Halle Kiefer: But there, they live in the countryside they have a beautiful home and they are constantly scampering around in nature, which is, you know, gorgeous. And it’s shot very beautifully, like their moments together compared to their moments with their mother in the house. They are constantly having fun together. They’re in the forest. Everything’s like lit golden and beautiful. And the boy’s names are Lukas and Elias. And fortunately for us, they are identical. They’re played by actual twins named Lukas and Elias.
Alison Leiby: Okay great. Easy.
Halle Kiefer: Which I think is very clever.
Alison Leiby: Easy.
Halle Kiefer: A good way. Yeah. And visually, they always have a different tank top on because it’s summer, which I really appreciate.
Alison Leiby: I really appreciate that. I wish they would do that with, like, adult actors who look similar. [laughs]
Halle Kiefer: Girl, if I see another rom com, like, I want every white man in Hollywood who has like—
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: —brown hair and a beard has to either wear—
Alison Leiby: A name tag.
Halle Kiefer: Wear a nametag.
Alison Leiby: Or have a [?].
Halle Kiefer: Especially like again as women in my later years I see I see a man and I’m like, I don’t know.
Alison Leiby: I don’t know who that is.
Halle Kiefer: There’s too many things that he could be from.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: Right. So but they’re having they’re having fun. And we see Lukas go into a cave and Elias sort of waits outside before joining him. And then Alison, we hear them laughing in the dark. And in another scene, we see them on a lake. And Elias is floating on an inner tube. And he says, Lukas. And we see bubbles ripple out of the depths. Title card. Goodnight Mommy.
Alison Leiby: Mm.
Halle Kiefer: We see a car pull into the beautiful driveway of their gorgeous home and the boys scamper inside to find their mother has returned and she’s closing all the blinds in her room. Or is it their mother, Alison? Okay. She turns and they have a start. Because they’re children.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: Her face is totally bandaged, except her mouth and her eyes, which are bruised and blackened. So the boys have what feels like a normal reaction, which is to hesitate and sort of be concerned and not.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: And the mother—
Alison Leiby: That’s jarring to see.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah. And again, we are squishy Americans who are really try to work out our emotional maturity. So I think here it’d be like, oh, you know what? I understand. I look pretty scary, huh? Like, you try to have some sort of reaction.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: For me watching this, I’m like, is the mother bad or is the mother simply Austrian? Because—
Alison Leiby: Yeah it is a little hard with the parenting in Europe, especially where you’re like, are you just kind of cold or are you an entire stranger who’s possessed by a demon or something? Like, It’s just hard to know.
Halle Kiefer: And I always say this as someone who has been served so many TikTok’s of like German, German born young women who are talking about their parenting, they’re German mothers, who is like who are like, oh, I have a cold, why don’t I call off work? Why don’t I, like they’re making fun of how like, stalwart war and like, steely their mothers are so watching this. I’m like, is this already a tell or is it just that she just had surgery and then she’s like, I can’t deal with you kids, you know?
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: And I guess that’s why I would wanna watch the remake and see how they did their dynamic.
Alison Leiby: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Halle Kiefer: Because she immediately starts yelling at them over their dirty clothes, telling them to wash up, and we see them compare. So every interaction with the mother is incredibly difficult and punishing. And then you cut to them in the bathtub and they’re like laughing, splashing around together. No dad? No dad. And there’s one reference later they’re playing like a Nintendo Switch or something. And she takes it from them and they say, Dad lets us play.
Alison Leiby: Okay, so—
Halle Kiefer: So the dad is in the yeah, he’s in the mix, but he’s not there now.
Alison Leiby: There.
Halle Kiefer: Later at dinner, Mother pours juice for Elias, and Lukas whispers Elias’s ear. And when Elias says can Lukas have a glass. She says if Lukas wants a glass, he could ask me himself. And when he points out, there’s only one plate of food on the table, Mother says, you know why. And walks into the other room. And Elias turns to Lukas and says, you should apologize. But it doesn’t seem like whatever that apology is for is going to happen Alison.
Alison Leiby: No.
Halle Kiefer: That night we see them playing Heads Up where you like, write something and then you sticky it.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: To the other person’s forehead. And Elias gets auto and, you know, Mother’s kind of warming up and they’re laughing and he’s trying to get it and finally he guesses car. And, you know, they have, like, a fun moment when it’s mother’s turn. Elias writes Mama and puts it on her head, which I think is fun, like a funny thing a kid would do.
Alison Leiby: Yeah, right.
Halle Kiefer: She cannot fucking get it. She’s like, is this person on TV? Is this a TV presenter on Austrian TV, which mother is. And she says, I don’t know. She’s like, she asked for a hint. And Lukas says, you like animals and she just ignores them until Elias says the same thing. And she’s like, I don’t know. And Elias says well this person has two kids. And she’s like, I don’t know who has two kids. Do I know this person? So again, like every moment.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: Of like what could be fun is like she’s just completely on edge. And, you know, that night Elias flosses his teeth and we see I didn’t know they had pet roaches yet. So he looks up and sees the biggest fucking roach I’ve every fucking seen in my life on the ceiling.
Alison Leiby: I mean, they’re so large.
Halle Kiefer: I was like, oh, my. Something about—
Alison Leiby: I have such a physical reaction to their existence.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah, it’s like Alison. A roach is a roach. But there’s a thing about brushing your teeth with a roach hanging over your head that there’s something about it.
Alison Leiby: No, no.
Halle Kiefer: That I didn’t care for.
Alison Leiby: I don’t care for it either. Just hearing about it.
Halle Kiefer: Speaking of when Lukas goes to brush his teeth, the roach falls from the ceiling and we see Lukas pick it up and put it back in the tank of roaches they have. So they have pet roaches Alison.
Alison Leiby: Is it an open top tank?
Halle Kiefer: You know it is. Which makes me think don’t the roaches get out all the time.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: But they’re going to have bigger problems here in a minute. So.
Alison Leiby: It seems that way.
Halle Kiefer: I guess they’re just fine with it, you know? And later, they’re playing like again, I don’t know any game and it’s like a handheld thing. It’s I probably.
Alison Leiby: Whatever.
Halle Kiefer: I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Some God forsaken thing. And the mother snatches it from them and says, well dad, let’s us play. It’s like, I’m not your father. And she said, when I’m recovering, there are new rules. There are new rules. I count them. One, don’t pick up the phone. You know, he’s only calling cause he’s drunk, and alone. No he says, let mom sleep. Leave her alone. When the doors close to her room knock. No visitors. You have to play outside to let me sleep. And even then you have to be quiet outside. And whatever you do, do not bring any nature shit into this house. So I don’t want any animals. I don’t know any sticks. I don’t want any leaves. You better not be dragging any in there. In the middle of her litany, Elias tries to calm her down, and so he picks up these two, like beautiful shells. They clearly, in my mind, it’s like this is where the father would have taken them. Somewhere to go buy her—
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: —something nice. And tries to offer these, like, beautiful shells. This is one from Elias and one from Lukas. She says okay and takes them, but it’s like, okay. Anyways, back to my list of demands. You know.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: That’s the first night where Lukas Elias they’re under the covers and they say this mother, it’s not like our other mother. This one’s not like the old mother. This this mother is really cold and mean. And again, personally I wrote to me, she just seems Austrian.
Alison Leiby: Yeah, that’s just what I assume. [laughter]
Halle Kiefer: I hate to say this if you’re Austrian, but you, me, I’m just sort of like a, you know, like.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: There are certain cultures from perhaps it’s a little you’re less emotionally—
Alison Leiby: Stoic and—
Halle Kiefer: —demonstrative a little more stoic. And that is a stereotype we have about some parts of Europe, I think you know what parts, you know what I mean. [laughter] Some parts who’ve had some different ideas throughout history. And the boys are starting to wonder, is this mother because she’s certainly no Meghan Trainor or is this another mother?
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: In the middle of the night. Elias wakes up to a clanging sound and he creeps in the hallway and creeps in the bathroom to see his mother putting cream on her un bandaged face.
Alison Leiby: Oof.
Halle Kiefer: And we only see it in profile, but it really is like swollen and monstrous. And he steps back and there’s a little sound as she turns, and her whole eye is the white is full of blood. And he runs back to his room. And when mother appears her head in, it looks like they’re both asleep. The next day it’s torrentially raining and then it starts hailing. And the boys are running around in the hail, like bouncing on their trampoline they have.
Alison Leiby: I’m sure.
Halle Kiefer: Throwing the hail at each other. And honestly it looks so fun right now. I would love—
Alison Leiby: Yeah. A trampoline.
Halle Kiefer: Trampoline in a hailstorm.
Alison Leiby: Yeah, that sounds fun as hell.
Halle Kiefer: It’s probably not safe but it looks really fun.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: And again, when they’re with each other, they’re having a blast. Later, they’re inside, they have a burping contest and their mother’s upstairs asleep and the doorbell rings. The boys know the rules. There are no visitors, and they peer out the front window and they’re like, we got to go get Mom. So I go up to field to get her to field the visitors. This is the correct move. There’s nothing else you—
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: —going to do, they’re children, they shouldn’t open the door. He walks in and he tries to gently wake her up, which again is like, full of, like, tension and terror. But he, it doesn’t work. So when the door closes, her eyes step open and she bites down, loudly crunching. But then we see her. She lifts her hand under the blanket and she has a cracker.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: So it’s not a roach. But in that moment, what is in her mouth, you know?
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: He goes on the stairs and Lukas must have let the guest in because there’s a delivery guy who went I went oh, it’s the Amazon Fresh delivery. The delivery guy is in their basement loading up their chest freezer, and he’s like, oh, my God, you got enough frozen pizza to last a year, presumably because Mother will be—
Alison Leiby: Mommy’s not going out.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah, Mommy’s not gonna be making those home cooked meals for a minute. And they put it in there. I wrote for some reason there’s enough frozen food to kill a party bus full of Vengaboys. I don’t know what the fuck I was talking. [laughter] I was going through something during this. What does that even mean?
Alison Leiby: I mean.
Halle Kiefer: The Vengaboys weren’t all, they weren’t specific boys, were they?
Alison Leiby: Also like, frozen food doesn’t kill people. It keeps them alive. [laughter]
Halle Kiefer: I mean, we’ll see. We’ll see about it. It’s going to kill me.
Alison Leiby: We’ll see. We’ll see.
Halle Kiefer: But in the meantime, the boys go back to trampolining and we see mothers staring at a self topless in the mirror. You know, she’s still bandaged, topless, which again, I’m like, is this scary or is it just a woman over 40? You know what I mean? Like.
Alison Leiby: Yeah, right. I spend a lot of time just alone, silently in front of my mirror, kind of taking everything in and trying to sort through it in my head. Like, I don’t blame her for that, especially coming off of a surgery that may or may not be cosmetic.
Halle Kiefer: Exactly. But I think the what we’re supposed to think is all of these things are terrifying to a children’s mind.
Alison Leiby: Yes. Absolutely.
Halle Kiefer: If we’re not addressing an underlying trauma.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: Which of course we’re not, because baby—
Alison Leiby: We are not.
Halle Kiefer: —If we were addressing the trauma, we wouldn’t have movies.
Alison Leiby: This isn’t a movie then, right?
Halle Kiefer: This would not be in the movies. When we, the movies. So they’re out on, the boys are out on one of the little jaunts. They go to the cemetery and they hear a cat meowing seemingly for help. And it’s sort of like a crevasse in the side of a hill. They lower themselves into it Alison. It’s just a pit, full of bones, human bones that I’m like, does a cemetery just dig a pit? And they’re like, yeah, we’re going to have funerals. Or maybe just [both speaking] everything shifted. No explanation.
Alison Leiby: Aye. Who knows?
Halle Kiefer: And they find a filthy little cat. So of course they bring it home as kids do.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: And try to hide it from their mother and they end up locking the door of their room she tries to bust in and is so enraged that they lock the door and they finally let her in and she starts tearing up the place, looking for whatever they brought. They brought in. They don’t. She doesn’t know if it’s a cat, but she’s she knows they’ve smuggled something in.
Alison Leiby: Somethings here. Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: And she finds a lighter in the top bunk and she says, why do you have a lighter in your bed and Elias says to burn books, which is pretty funny.
Alison Leiby: That’s [laughs] that is funny.
Halle Kiefer: And she keeps going through everything. And Elias becomes so enraged he claps in her face, which I will say, if you ever clapped like they did clapping in my mothers face like—
Alison Leiby: Oh, it’s over. [laughs]
Halle Kiefer: Our lives would be over.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: She pins him down in a rage.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: And then storms out. And when she leaves, she takes the lock out of the door so he can’t lock the door anymore.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: At dusk, the boys stand on the balcony. They watch their mother walk into the woods.
Alison Leiby: Super chill.
Halle Kiefer: And then we see when she’s there, she’s walking through the woods. She’s taking off her clothes piece by piece. Also, she got that banging body. She looks great.
Alison Leiby: Her body looks amazing.
Halle Kiefer: Whoever this mother is, she is mother.
Alison Leiby: She is mother.
Halle Kiefer: She looks insane. But then finally she takes off the bandage that her head and does this sort of hyper fast speed head shaking that we all saw on Jacob’s Ladder. Her head just vibrates frantically back and forth. Alison, it’s a dream. The boy’s eyes snap open.
Alison Leiby: Okay. They’re still in bed.
Halle Kiefer: Yes, unfortunately, Alison, I do have some terrible news in the middle of the night. The boys then sneak into her room and put a roach on mother’s chest.
Alison Leiby: No.
Halle Kiefer: And it crawls in her mouth. Alison, at this point, what would you do? What would you do?
[voice over]: What would you do?
Alison Leiby: What would I do? Pre crunch?
Halle Kiefer: Yes. If you were to awaken in the middle of the night and your two very odd twin boys.
Alison Leiby: Oh, I’m. I’m Mother? Okay.
Halle Kiefer: You can be the boys. You can answer from either side.
Alison Leiby: If I’m her and I’m asleep and my children put a prehistoric seeming bug on my bed.
Halle Kiefer: Yes.
Alison Leiby: After I told them, leave me alone. I’m recovering from surgery. They’re going to their dad’s house.
Halle Kiefer: Yes.
Alison Leiby: I don’t care how shitty he is or what’s happening. I need a minute.
Halle Kiefer: I do think there again, like every traumatic thing that we talk about in this. If she were to use any resources.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: Or ask anyone for it, then the movie could not continue. The movie relies on her dysfunctional—
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: Her her dysfunction in dealing with her children. Also, it sounded like you’re just ate a roach when you swallow like that. But what’s crazy is she doesn’t crunch down on it. The crunching—
Alison Leiby: Oh.
Halle Kiefer: —down on it that you see in the trailer is from when she’s eating the cracker so she doesn’t eat it, which is another thing I don’t love. I’m sorry about that. This movie is a lot of the moments in the trailer are sort of what’s the word I’m looking for?
Alison Leiby: Cheated?
Halle Kiefer: Cheated a little bit.
Alison Leiby: Interesting.
Halle Kiefer: And it sort of reminds me of—
Alison Leiby: But it does crawl in her mouth, no?
Halle Kiefer: It absolutely crawls in her mouth. And then I’m literally watching the scene just to make sure I’m telling you the right thing. It crawls in her motherfucking mouth. And then that’s just sort of the end of it.
Alison Leiby: Ugh.
Halle Kiefer: And, you know, we cut—
Alison Leiby: That alone. Very upsetting.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah. We just cut to the next day and.
Alison Leiby: Wow.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah, and I because I also remember that from the trailer and I thought.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: That’s kind of a little bit of a little bit of a letdown.
Alison Leiby: A little bit of a letdown.
Halle Kiefer: A little bit of a letdown.
Alison Leiby: Crunch the roach bitch.
Halle Kiefer: The next day, Mother’s cleaning the outside wall of the home. And Alison, this is the most horrifying shit. This is incomprehensible. H.P. Lovecraft level fucking mind bending. She’s cleaning the outside wall of her home, and this bitch is wearing wedge sandals.
Alison Leiby: Oh.
Halle Kiefer: She’s scrubbing like she’s doing—
Alison Leiby: No.
Halle Kiefer: —active, horrid home maintenance in wedge sandals?
Alison Leiby: No.
Halle Kiefer: I have never seen anything more egregious. She’s alone in her own home with her two children. At that point, I’d be like, well, I’ll call the cops on that.
Alison Leiby: Yeah, that’s some disturbing behavior right there.
Halle Kiefer: Something is wrong, right?
Alison Leiby: Yes, deeply.
Halle Kiefer: Meanwhile, the boys use a magnifying glass to burn a dead bee.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: Later, we see them looking through a photo album and we see that the mother has taken out, like, wedding photos. Like has removed all the photos of the father.
Alison Leiby: Of course.
Halle Kiefer: Obviously, like you said, an acrimonious divorce, and they find a photo of their mother with her what looks to be her twin. It’s a woman who is dressed exactly like her.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: But she doesn’t have a twin. And they know this because they are her children, but also they do try to Google their mother and they find that listing from their house. So the mother has put the house up for sale.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: Meanwhile, they’ve also put a baby monitor under mother’s bed to try to listen in to see if she’s doing anything other mothery. Right. They go to check on the cat, only to find that cat has snuck out of their room. They cannot find the cat.
Alison Leiby: Okay. Okay.
Halle Kiefer: And they don’t have time to look for it because mother calls them it’s time to do chores. And we hear the mother on the phone say, I have to make him stop. He has to face it. But then she notices that Elias has stopped vacuuming and she takes the phone call to her room. So I have to make him stop. He has to face it, presumably about one or both of the boys.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: Unfortunately, Alison, after they are done with their chores, they search their gigantic fucking house for Leo the cat.
Alison Leiby: It’s a nice house.
Halle Kiefer: They named the cat Leo.
Alison Leiby: Aw Leo the cat.
Halle Kiefer: Also, I got bad news. They searched high and low and they finally find him and he has died. He has died, he has curled up next to the boiler. In the boiler in the basement, next to the chest freezer. And then, Alison, they unfortunately do something that really causes this film to take a real turn for the worse. They take all the bugs out of their aquarium, put them in like a jar, fill the aquarium with water, and put the dead cat inside it and put the aquarium on the coffee table for mother to find.
Alison Leiby: What. These are evil children.
Halle Kiefer: Yes.
Alison Leiby: That is deranged.
Halle Kiefer: And I think that’s the moment where you realize, like, oh, this is not necessarily a movie about the other mother.
Alison Leiby: No.
Halle Kiefer: Unfortunately, she does have an other mother type reaction, which is she sees the dead cat floating in the aquarium instead of calling anyone for help. She goes upstairs, gets the jar with a roaches are and then starts dumping in the aquarium them in the aquarium, killing them. So, retaliation.
Alison Leiby: I mean, great.
Halle Kiefer: I mean, look, I don’t hate that the roaches are dead, but like, her reaction to finding this dead cat in an aquarium is to kill—
Alison Leiby: Kill—
Halle Kiefer: —a living creature.
Alison Leiby: —their pet.
Halle Kiefer: Right. It’s like. So that’s why they’re like that?
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: Because you are also like that.
Alison Leiby: You made them.
Halle Kiefer: You made them this way. And the boys run out because they’ve been watching to see what she would do. They run out and Elias tells her we want our real mom back. You’re not our mom. And she slaps them across the face and drags him upstairs. Now, this is when I realized that because I’ve been trying to keep track of them based on their tank top color.
Alison Leiby: Mm hmm.
Halle Kiefer: But what I didn’t understand until this moment is they they switched tank tops. That’s inconsistent.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: So that’s intentional.
Halle Kiefer: Okay.
Alison Leiby: I think we’re intentionally supposed to not necessarily know which—
Halle Kiefer: Is which.
Alison Leiby: —son is talking to her, so she drags them upstairs, slams the door, and, you know, Lukas is pounding on the other side and she has Elias say over them again, you’re our mother, basically forcing him to say it over and over again. And she tells them from now on, one pair of clothes, one plate, and promise me not to talk about your brother. And she says no, and she slaps them across the face again. So berating him again, something bad has happened.
Halle Kiefer: Yes.
Alison Leiby: And instead of dealing with this in a human way.
Halle Kiefer: Yep.
Alison Leiby: She is going to abuse these children.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: Until a breaking point, which is going to happen pretty soon. I’ll be honest.
Alison Leiby: I would imagine.
Halle Kiefer: And, you know, in the room, you know, Lukas comforts Elias and Elias says they wanted to she wants to drive us apart. And then you see them, they’re sort of slapping each other in the face, like as a game. I think it’s almost like they’re, like, preparing each other for that to happen again. Like, they’re not going to. They’re not going to be separated. Right.
Alison Leiby: Right.
Halle Kiefer: That night they play in their rooms and they run to the door when they hear their mother approaching and they’re pushing the door close so she can’t come in but then they realize that she’s locking them in there from her side.
Alison Leiby: She’s like, stay in there.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah.
Alison Leiby: I’m not coming in, but you’re not coming out.
Halle Kiefer: And they try to listen through the baby monitor and you hear what like could be moaning or it could be snuffling or it could be her talking to her sleep like you do hear sounds, but they’re not necessarily it’s nothing you can just play it for a jury.
Alison Leiby: Sure.
Halle Kiefer: A jury in other mother court, you know?
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: But they do have to pee in jars because they don’t have access to the bathroom.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: And we see there’s an altar with a photo of mother and them and they pray start praying for actual mother to come home. And they take shifts, staying up to guard the room and they have a toy crossbow. But it still shoots like a real like a bolt. So it’s not like an adult’s actual crossbow, but it’s still something that could wound if if it was used, right?
Alison Leiby: Yes. Okay.
Halle Kiefer: Alison. A wind blows through and stuffs out the candles at their altar. And then the night Elias wakes up and the doors is fully open.
Alison Leiby: Not great.
Halle Kiefer: He walks through the hallway and he’s armed with a box cutter. When he gets to mothe—
Alison Leiby: The most horrific weapon.
Halle Kiefer: Truly, I hate to bring this up. I think the first time I ever heard of a box cutter was 9/11. [laughs] Like, I had no. I had no concept. It was also the first time I heard about Muslim people, too [laughter] if I was thinking about that recently. It is. I do think there’s something in like we don’t have to get into it, but it’s like in the language that the right is trying to use to talk about trans people. Comparing that to the Islamophobia after 9/11.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: In terms of like intensity and like all the big swings they were taking with it.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: And I remember I feel like I kind of had the same [laughs] sort of reaction. And I’m queer now, but like, when this all started, I had the same reaction to them targeting trans people as when Muslim people were targeted, which is I was I’m from a small town in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know anything. I my little thought was like, that’s like saying the Amish are the enemy.
Alison Leiby: Sure.
Halle Kiefer: Like, I had no cultural understanding whatsoever.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: And that’s how I found out what a box cutter was. Anyways [laughter] in in Mother’s room, Elias takes that box cutter Alison, and he cuts open her stomach, and a mass of roaches crawl out. Oh it’s just a dream.
Alison Leiby: Stop dreaming. [laughs]
Halle Kiefer: I know anyways he’s sitting in his chair, in his room, like holding watch, you know. And he listens to the baby monitor again. It’s sort of monstrous, but, like, is it monsters? Is she just groaning? Is she masturbating? Like, is there? It’s not.
Alison Leiby: Right.
Halle Kiefer: You know, it’s nothing to convict on. But they have a plan, Lukas and Elias say that we’re going to cut our hair and dress exactly the same so she can’t tell them apart. So then she can’t separate us. So if she doesn’t know which one she’s talking to, it’s going to be harder for her to, you know.
Alison Leiby: Yes isolate something.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah. Mother comes in the morning to wake them up and through the door is like, are we, let’s be friends again. I’m really sorry. And which again, I don’t know, if that’s going to cut it, but, you know—
Alison Leiby: Too little too late.
Halle Kiefer: When she opens the door Alison, her bandages are off and she looks incredible. Like it healed beautifully. She looks great.
Alison Leiby: Good for her.
Halle Kiefer: It’s almost suspicious how quickly it healed.
Alison Leiby: Mm.
Halle Kiefer: And she gives them as sort of like an apology gift, a boomerang. And she says, do you want to go outside and play with that? And they say, yeah. The second she opens the front door they just start running into the woods to escape, just fucking bolt while she’s yelling. They run through the woods, they run through the fields which are being burned. I don’t know. That’s probably a practice. Somebody is doing.
Alison Leiby: Yeah. Somebody somewhere.
Halle Kiefer: And they finally get to a nearby town, which seems completely deserted, except there is a guy screaming and wandering the streets, players playing the accordion.
Alison Leiby: What is Austria?
Halle Kiefer: And again, I know I’m like this just feels like what our impression of Austria is.
Alison Leiby: Yeah, I’m like, is that supposed to be scary or is that supposed to be comforting? [laughter]
Halle Kiefer: Right I was like this all seems like what this is like—
Alison Leiby: Is that deeply normal or deeply abnormal for Austria? I don’t know.
Halle Kiefer: We don’t know. And they go to try to go to a church and they try talking to somebody in there. And the guys like, I’m not a priest. I’m just I’m just the sexton. They say, well, can we talk to the priest? Yes, but he’s not in. And the sexton said, I’ll go, I’ll get the priest for you. And I assumed that this would end in their terrible demise. But the priest has promised to take them to the police station so they could report their mother. Or is he doing that, Alison? No, he’s just driving them home to their mom.
Alison Leiby: Oh, God.
Halle Kiefer: And he goes, gets out. It’s torrential raining and when he gets the priest gets out to talk to their mother and he goes back to the car. They’ve locked the car doors. Which I thought was a pretty slick move for kids.
Alison Leiby: Yeah that’s smart.
Halle Kiefer: But he’s able to open the door eventually and the boys run in a side door and the priest goes to mother and says, well, I mean, you want to talk about what the fuck’s going on? Or? And she said, It’s all been a bit much. The accident, the separation, and the boys shut off the porch lights. Anyways. Alison. Mother isn’t doing so hot. She goes—
Alison Leiby: No it doesn’t seem like it.
Halle Kiefer: —she’s crying off all her make up, she goes into her room and she takes her medication and she lays down. And as she drifts asleep, the lights snap off and in the morning mother wakes up to find the twins standing over her, wearing matching cardboard masks. And she realizes that she has been bound to the bed. Alison, who will survive this film? [sighs]
[voice over]: Who will survive?
Alison Leiby: I think mother will not make it. I have a theory.
Halle Kiefer: Mm hmm.
Alison Leiby: That one of the twins is dead.
Halle Kiefer: Mm hmm. So will the living one survive?
Alison Leiby: That’s what I’m. I think. Yes.
Halle Kiefer: Okay.
Alison Leiby: And live on to terrorize some other mother.
Halle Kiefer: Some other mother? The twins demand their mother, who is bound to the bed, and they say, where is our mother? She says, I’m right here. I am your mother. They show her the photo with her and like what looks like her twin and say, who the fuck is this? And she said, that’s my friend. We would always dress alike. And I’m like, gay. But either way.
Alison Leiby: Very queer coded.
Halle Kiefer: Right? It’s like, okay, girl. But either way, they are. She’s like, I don’t. It is me. It is genuinely me. However, there are certain things that the boys are trying to noodle out. So they go to their office. Her office. We see—
Alison Leiby: Their office. They’re like, let’s go to the office and really work this out.
Halle Kiefer: I mean, basically their room, they have like, I think, a crossbow. They have a lighter. It’s like—
Alison Leiby: Yeah they do have a lot of stuff.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah. And I mean, the house is insane. So, like, we do know that she is very wealthy.
Alison Leiby: Yes. Yes.
Halle Kiefer: Like, this is a very wealthy family.
Alison Leiby: Gorgeous house.
Halle Kiefer: So in her office, we see photos of her planned plastic surgery. So we could see that she just had work done. Right. But they find a video of her and she has brown eyes and they go to mother and they try to pry her contacts out because her eyes are blue. She says, no my eyes are blue, I just have colored contacts. I use some time they’re in the bathroom. You can go look.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: Alison they can’t find them, which then leads to the twins having their first real fight.
Alison Leiby: Okay. Finally.
Halle Kiefer: Because. Basically, the question is like, can we trust her? Can we believe her? And how far are we going to take this, given that we are both children.
Alison Leiby: Children and she is an adult—
Halle Kiefer: But—
Alison Leiby: —and allegedly our mother.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah. But Lukas says, I thought we agreed not to trust her. And they end up getting into a fistfight and they bloody each other’s noses. And mother’s starts to scream for help. And Elias walks in and just throws water in her face. So again, it’s like escalating.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: And I’ll say, one thing, If there was anything I wanted to watch less and maybe that’s why a part of me is like—
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: —I didn’t love this for me. Watching a child be in a dangerous situation. I don’t need to see a child as like predator or child as like victimizer.
Alison Leiby: Yeah. Or like a dickhead. [laughs]
Halle Kiefer: Yeah. I mean, I’m just like, come on. But, you know, he’s she’s trying to reason with him and finally says, please, just go get the scissors. Nothing bad has happened yet. This doesn’t have to keep going. And he takes out her phone and he shows her a video. It’s a video that she took of her slapping Elias in the face and having him repeat. I will never, I will not listen to my brother. I will not listen to my brother. I will not talk about my brother over and over and over again.
Alison Leiby: Mm hmm.
Halle Kiefer: And Elias says, our mother would never do something like that. So. Sort of the implication being our mother would never do something horrible. So you are horrible. You cannot be our mother. You are this another mother, this monstrous other, because this is not what our mother would have done. And mother sighs and says, I’m sorry, but she tells him, Elias, like, I know this is hard, but we can make it through. We can. We can be a family. We could do this. And he because he’s the weaker one and he does want he ultimately does want them to be a family or wants it to be really his mother.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: He starts to cut her free.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: Lukas comes in horrified.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: And points out that mother’s beauty mark is running in the water. So again, like another thing she sort of put on her face to curate her face. That’s because their mother had a beauty mark. And she says—
Alison Leiby: And this one is.
Halle Kiefer: I did.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: But they removed it in the hospital because they can be precancerous and Lukas slaps her in the face.
Alison Leiby: I don’t need to see a child slap someone.
Halle Kiefer: But I think it’s sort of like the tables have turned like she.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: Like we accept not accept. We as society have set up historically that you are allowed to hit your kids.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: So then to see a kid hit their parent in the face.
Alison Leiby: Yes. Jarring.
Halle Kiefer: It’s jarring, which I think intentionally reminds us that’s insane that an adult would hit a child ever.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: Like it’s grotesque. So it is like she is this monstrous mother. But their interpretation of it must be that you. The fact you would do this means you’re not our mother. Right.
Alison Leiby: Right.
Halle Kiefer: And as if they hadn’t made their point enough, Alison, they then use a magnifying glass to burn her face.
Alison Leiby: Ugh.
Halle Kiefer: Using the sun through the window.
Alison Leiby: And she just got all that beautiful work done.
Halle Kiefer: And to attempt to torture. Oh, I know, girl. I mean, and it’s good work, too. She looks fabulous. She got like an eye lift.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: They torture her in a telling basically, to try to torture her into telling them where their real mother is and it causes an actual burn or flesh bubbles. Alison. Am I crazy to say I’ll just lie and be like, oh, she’s at the train station. Let me up and we’ll go—
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: —drive there and I’ll just drive you to a hospital or something. Like.
Alison Leiby: Yes, exactly.
Halle Kiefer: Let’s fucking just lie.
Alison Leiby: That would be my, that would be my plan if I were her.
Halle Kiefer: Exactly like, if we don’t—
Alison Leiby: Just lie.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah, like, just fucking lie. They’re kids.
Alison Leiby: We lie to kids all the time.
Halle Kiefer: Right. I mean like bitch you we already know you’re a bad mom. What is another, what is lying to them? You know, however, she doesn’t do that. And they slap tape over her mouth and leave her there.
Alison Leiby: These kids.
Halle Kiefer: And we see them praying to a metal it’s like in the cemetery. There’s like a big memorial, like a metal cross. They light a candle in front of it to pray for the return of their real mother, Alison, back at the house. They hear the doorbell rings, and I was hoping it was the Amazon Fresh guy again. No, it’s two people from Red Cross asking for donations.
Alison Leiby: Okay, as—
Halle Kiefer: And they do something which again, feels very Austrian.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: Which is they’re like, oh, well, the door’s unlocked. No one appears to be home. Let’s check it out. So they are wandering around the first floor of this home.
Alison Leiby: I, not in this country.
Halle Kiefer: Not in this country. We live in a war zone where it’s like—
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: You would be shot.
Alison Leiby: Gunfire.
Halle Kiefer: And so watching this, it’s like this sequence could only happen because this is a European film.
Alison Leiby: In Europe. Yeah. Or anywhere but the United States.
Halle Kiefer: Mother hears them talking and moving around because the boys are outside and don’t realize they’re there yet. And we, you know, she’s trying to scream, but of course she has tape on her mouth and the boys intercept the volunteers and say, oh, our moms not home. And that noise that you hear upstairs is just our dog. And the Red Cross volunteers say, well, when do you think your mother will be home? And the boys panic and go soon. So the volunteers ask if they could just stay until—
Alison Leiby: Stay?
Halle Kiefer: —she arrives. It’s like you’re gonna stay in a strangers—
Alison Leiby: How hard up are they for money?
Halle Kiefer: I mean probably pretty hard up.
Alison Leiby: Yeah I guess.
Halle Kiefer: It’s like. You’re going to stay at a stranger’s home with her two younger children until if I came home. And I found those people there. [laughter] I’d be like, I would have I will shoot you myself. Like, what the fuck are you doing? Like.
Alison Leiby: Get the fuck out of my house.
Halle Kiefer: My children are here. Get out of here. As, like, again as an American can you even imagine?
Alison Leiby: No.
Halle Kiefer: The volunteers are just like at the kitchen table, counting how many donations they’ve got in the day. And I was like this. They’re in the rural area. Like.
Alison Leiby: What?
Halle Kiefer: How many? I have so many questions. But luckily the boys are smart, so they go into their mom’s purse and get cash out and say, please take this. This is exactly how much she always donates and the Red Cross people like hem and haw. It’s like we don’t normally take money from kids. It’s like, yeah, this whole thing makes no sense if you think about it.
Alison Leiby: Yeah, it’s a weird thing. [laughs]
Halle Kiefer: But they take it and they’re about to walk out. When Mother finally gets the tape off her mouth and screams for help. Alison, The Red Cross people are already outside. They don’t hear it. And we’re now escalating. So we’re now going to start escalating the boys superglue mother’s mouth shut so she can not scream or get the tape out.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: And they only cut it open when they realize that she can’t eat any of the delicious frozen pizza. They heated up. Again, this is just we see blood. Like they cut her lips so there’s blood bubbling out of her mouth while she’s screaming. And they say.
Alison Leiby: Ugh.
Halle Kiefer: You know, prove if you’re our mother, prove that you’re our mother. What’s Lukas’s favorite song? And she says Lullaby Goodnight, which is a song we heard at the beginning. And they re tape her mouth and then they start singing. And that’s where I’m like, all right, where are we going with this you know what I mean? Like.
Alison Leiby: Yeah. I’m curious where we’re where we’re headed.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah. And we also see a sequence where basically they rip the tape off and as far as I can tell, they put like a dowel in her mouth and they do that thing where you, you take like a stick, like a dowel, and then you use a string and you use it to start a fire.
Alison Leiby: Mm hmm.
Halle Kiefer: Like they’re taking string and they’re like pulling it again to torture their mother.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: Into telling them, you know, where.
Alison Leiby: That she’s not their mother?
Halle Kiefer: She’s not their mother. And again, I would have said it over and over again. I would be like, you’re right, I am just some lady—
Alison Leiby: Let me drive you there.
Halle Kiefer: Exactly. She lives at a mental institution.
Alison Leiby: I will show you where she is.
Halle Kiefer: Exactly. You just let me go. Also, meanwhile, she’s peed her pants, you know, and her sons ask, can you not tell when you have to pee? Again humiliating their mother, you know, embarrassing her. But they undo her bindings and they point the crossbow at her so she could change the sheets. And in the moment where she stands up, she takes—
Alison Leiby: God, then she has to do fucking housework. On top of all of this?
Halle Kiefer: Girl. She takes the urine soaked comforter at them and whips it at them. And it’s heavy enough that they’re both like, sort of like thrown off guard—
Alison Leiby: Yeah cause they’re like seven.
Halle Kiefer: —seven. And she’s able to run down the stairs Alison. And she makes it through the front door. But they have put a trip wire and when her in front of the door and when she hits it, she falls and smashes her head so hard on the concrete.
Alison Leiby: Ugh.
Halle Kiefer: She wakes to find them dragging her across the floor, her eyes glued shut. And we see in sort of a moment it feels like cinematic, but I don’t necessarily know if I understand.
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: The cat. The cat in the aquarium is still there Alison. And Elias sets the liquid on fire, so the cat in the aquarium is now on fire, which is a fun cinematic piece. But.
Alison Leiby: I just don’t.
Halle Kiefer: What did they put in there to make it so it can burn?
Alison Leiby: Right.
Halle Kiefer: And also, why would he do that?
Alison Leiby: Why?
Halle Kiefer: As a character? I don’t know.
Alison Leiby: I don’t know.
Halle Kiefer: And finally, we get to you called it. We get to the fucking reveal the actual proper fucking twist in this movie, which is—
Alison Leiby: I’m glad there’s a real twist.
Halle Kiefer: Absolutely. As she says. Elias, please. It’s not your fault that Lukas died. The accident wasn’t your fault. So finally we get. We finally understand that Lukas is simply an apparition. That every time that he is spoken, that every time someone who we interpret to be interacting as Lukas was, in fact, Elias, he exists only in Elias’s mind. And the mother was never interacting with him at all.
Alison Leiby: Ever.
Halle Kiefer: And what I appreciate is they don’t go it like in America you’d have to see a montage of that.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: In Europe, they’re like, you get it.
Alison Leiby: You get it.
Halle Kiefer: Fucking get it.
Alison Leiby: We did it.
Halle Kiefer: Unfortunately, Lukas sort of emerges from behind Elias and says she’s lying. Let her prove she’s our mother. And he takes a candle. They’ve lit candles all over the room. Very. Again. You know, it’s like they have a great idea of space and of tone.
Alison Leiby: Totally. I mean.
Halle Kiefer: The vibe.
Alison Leiby: Be set designers, you know.
Halle Kiefer: And he Lukas goes and holds a candle to the curtains and says, If you’re a mother, what am I doing? But of course, she can’t see him because he isn’t there. And she says, I don’t—
Alison Leiby: Right and her eyes are glued shut.
Halle Kiefer: Right. Oh, she’s able to pry one open. [laughs]
Alison Leiby: Okay.
Halle Kiefer: Yes, I agree. Because I was like, well, also, my eyes are glued shut. [laughs]
Alison Leiby: Unfair. [laughs]
Halle Kiefer: It seems like you’re setting me up to fail as a mother here, boys. But and he Elias says, if you if you’re really our mother, you’d be able to see him. And she says, I can’t see him at all. Alison Lukas sets the curtain to light. Of course, it’s much like curtains in every horror movie.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: They’re made of paper towels.
Alison Leiby: Widely flammable.
Halle Kiefer: Soaked in gasoline. Fucking shoots up the wall. The aquarium explodes, sending dead cat water, glass and fire, spraying everywhere. And in the mele, Mother is set alight and we watch as she burns and writhes in agony Alison. And sometime later we see the firefighters are battling the blaze. And the last shot we have is of the boys who, in order to escape the fire, are backing up the stairs. We see the paramedics working out a body and we see the image of Mother now in a dress walking out of the home. And as we follow her, we see her humming as she walks out of the cornfield and she joins her two boys everywhere looking adorable as they look to camera and they sing Goodbye and Goodnight in German. The end.
Alison Leiby: They’re all dead.
Halle Kiefer: They’re all dead. Alison.
Alison Leiby: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
Halle Kiefer: Um, yeah.
Alison Leiby: Whew.
Halle Kiefer: So I wanted to. I feel like, you know, I’ve been trying to do a little segment where you connect things to the news. I’ll be honest, I don’t have fucking anything. I’m like, this isn’t. I don’t know what it’s like.
Alison Leiby: Not everything will.
Halle Kiefer: Well, yeah. So I thought maybe we could give give something ourselves. You know, as sort of—
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: —in substitute of that. And I was trying to think I wanted to ask, what’s the weirdest thing you did as a kid? Now, it doesn’t have to be necessarily bad, but something just genuinely strange? Or looking back, why would you do it? And mine that I will share is I remember one time my relatives we have relatives that live in Texas. They were visiting.
Alison Leiby: Mm hmm.
Halle Kiefer: And my cousin Matt and I were. There were foxes that lived. I this is going to make it sound like I lived in. I mean, I lived in rural Ohio. I mean, it was it was a paradise of a sort at the time. And there are foxes that lived on a hill behind our barn and we were like, we’ll play a prank on the grown ups. And we were young, like, I don’t remember how.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: But we were definitely not in middle school, I don’t think. And so we took some sort of berry that we found nearby and we, we’d sharpened a stick and we put berry juice all over and we ran over to our relatives and said, look, we got a stick and we stabbed and we killed one of the foxes. Look at the blood on the stick. And if you can imagine this Alison [laughs] this was horrifying. And I’ll always remember my—
Alison Leiby: I that is truly horrifying.
Halle Kiefer: My aunt’s reaction. It wasn’t until, like I saw her, she was like, oh my God. I was like, oh no, we didn’t. But it was like it was as if, like, we have this incredible story, it’s compelling.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: You’re going to be wowed by it. And it was like telling them that it’s like, well, first of all, why did we do this? And second of all, what did I think the reaction would be? And it’s just like I just want to use this as example of like the as a child, your brain don’t work good.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: You don’t know what things are. And—
Alison Leiby: And how like it’ll actually be interpreted by adults.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah and I just I don’t know there’s something about it that brought this to mind where it’s like it was like a weird, violent fantasy, but also it was good then to have an adult be like, oh, don’t well, that’s not good it’s like you’re right.
Alison Leiby: [laughs] Right.
Halle Kiefer: Versus this movie, which I think is like it is a children’s violent fantasies of their mother and then their mother meeting those with her own violence and her—
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: —own rage. And it just became this becomes this loop of both wondering if your mother is a monster and then your mother actually acting like a mother, a monster.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: So you were right to think that. Alison, what’s the weirdest thing you did as a kid?
Alison Leiby: I mean, I did something similar when I when you were like, what’s weird? Like, I go to kind of like the witch episode of PEN15, where they’re like, we have power.
Halle Kiefer: Hell yeah.
Alison Leiby: Like that stuff. But I similarly, my friend and I, and we were really, really young. So like the, the execution of this was not nearly as terrifying as what you did.
Halle Kiefer: Uh huh.
Alison Leiby: But I remember my friend Jen was over and we were just like home with my mom. And we like, had been like doing something for a while. And then we put I had this like massive stuffed bear from something and we put it we left it downstairs with a note that said, we’re dead.
Halle Kiefer: [laughs] Oh my God.
Alison Leiby: To like [laughter] to like try and, I must have been six. Like, I—
Halle Kiefer: That’s incredible though.
Alison Leiby: [laughs] And like, and then we, like, hid so that my mom would find it and, like, weird. I don’t know what like, I think we’re, like, in our minds, like the bear killed us.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah. Mm hmm.
Alison Leiby: But like, we still left a note.
Halle Kiefer: I love—
Alison Leiby: It’s like, it’s like it’s like the logic didn’t work, but I remember we were like, it was the hardest. I was laughing so hard. We thought it was such a funny thing.
Halle Kiefer: It’s incredible.
Alison Leiby: It’s like my mom was kind of like like nothing about it was real enough or made enough sense to be like, hey, that’s terrifying. Don’t ever do that. And she was like, no, I knew that you were alive. And I was like, we were like, okay, well then for a minute you thought that we were dead in the house and a bear killed us and we left a note.
Halle Kiefer: I love it, because either you left it from beyond the grave or you wrote it before the bear killed you just in case—
Alison Leiby: Or the bear gave us a minute, was like, do you want to leave a note? And it’s like Mom always said, leave a note.
Halle Kiefer: You got to leave a note. Yeah.
Alison Leiby: You got to leave a note. So.
Halle Kiefer: I love that.
Alison Leiby: I remember doing stuff like that.
Halle Kiefer: Beautiful.
Alison Leiby: That was really weird. And like, just like, where did that come from?
Halle Kiefer: Exactly.
Alison Leiby: Why did I do—
Halle Kiefer: Yeah. What is the, what is the nature of a child? But I mean, children are just as morbid and weird as adults. You know.
Alison Leiby: Yeah, they just have no, like, context for the things that they are picking up. So they’re just kind of like, oh, I’m dead. And it’s like, no.
Halle Kiefer: We’re dead is incredible.
Alison Leiby: We’re dead.
Halle Kiefer: Well, we’re dead.
Alison Leiby: We are dead.
Halle Kiefer: Speaking of dead [both speaking] how spooky. On a scale of spookiness, would you say this movie is Alison? Well, a spooky scale, if you will.
[voice over]: A spooky scale.
Alison Leiby: The bugs are a problem.
Halle Kiefer: The bugs are a problem.
Alison Leiby: And like the eeriness of it all, like just her face being bandaged is scary.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah.
Alison Leiby: Like, that’s a scary thing. I’m going to give this of a six, a five and a half.
Halle Kiefer: Okay, great. Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: What about you?
Alison Leiby: I do think it was scary.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah. I’ll give this a six, I think. Like, there were genuinely scary moments. I just have a I hate and I can’t remember if we haven’t done It Comes at Night yet. Spoiler if you haven’t seen It Comes at Night. I hate when you show me a dream. If you show me more than one dream in a fucking trailer.
Alison Leiby: More than one, yeah.
Halle Kiefer: That makes me so fucking mad. And also, I don’t think you get more than one dream unless, like, the whole concept is about the dreaming life—
Alison Leiby: Right, where it’s like. Yeah. Where it’s like, oh, it’s happening in our dreams. We’re getting hunted in our dream.
Halle Kiefer: Yes.
Alison Leiby: That stuff. I’m like, well, yes, you need many things so that that can, like, carry the plot. But if it’s just like, this is a thing we’re going to.
Halle Kiefer: Yes.
Alison Leiby: Like implement, you get it once it.
Halle Kiefer: It makes me fucking nuts, it makes it’s so disappointing when it happens more than once. But I mean a beautifully shot film, well-acted. I love that. The actual Elias and Lukas Schwarz. I love that they used their [both speaking] real names. That’s so cute. Everyone in it was great. I just think. Yeah, it’s just. I don’t need a fake out. I just need you to.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: Let me see that. Let me see that mother, eat a bug, you know?
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: We’re going to reverse it. We’re doing fatal mistakes now. What are some fatal mistakes you think they may have made in Goodnight Mommy?
[voice over]: Fatal mistakes.
Alison Leiby: Boy, I mean, not reckoning with trauma, loss of a—
Halle Kiefer: The biggest mistake of all.
Alison Leiby: —loss of a son and brother. You got to you got to work on that as a family. That’s the bit like without. Had they not done that.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah.
Alison Leiby: All of this could have been avoided.
Halle Kiefer: Don’t hate your fucking kids.
Alison Leiby: Yeah. Don’t take your kids.
Halle Kiefer: Like as soon as I, you know that she’s slapping those kids.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: I was like, burn, bitch.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: I’m sorry. Like, I’m sympathetic. Like, this would be really hard, but, like, you were just beating your child so that he he forgets his dead twin.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: Not. Not good. Not good, gal.
Alison Leiby: No, not good.
Halle Kiefer: I’ll say that. Not in any parenting books.
Alison Leiby: Having hissing cockroaches around.
Halle Kiefer: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. You can’t have that in the house.
Alison Leiby: You can’t. You can’t.
Halle Kiefer: Not when you know that you got two. Oh, well, one. Not when you have any number of little scamps.
Alison Leiby: Children, yeah.
Halle Kiefer: Too many scamps in the house.
Alison Leiby: Too many scamps, scamping around.
Halle Kiefer: [laughs] Yeah. Other than that, you know, the kids do their best with the information they had, which was in inadequate. But.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: You know, what can you do?
Alison Leiby: What can you do?
Halle Kiefer: Well, guys, thank you so much for listening and for—
Alison Leiby: More mommies.
Halle Kiefer: More mommies to come.
Alison Leiby: More mommies to come.
Halle Kiefer: Always more mommies. It’s a year in mommies. You know.
Alison Leiby: Yeah.
Halle Kiefer: And we said this in the other episode, but we are doing Evil Dead Rises.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: For our live show, and we will obviously post more information about that.
Alison Leiby: Yes.
Halle Kiefer: It’ll be at the end of May and we’ll have more specifics posted to our social—
Alison Leiby: Yeah so stay tuned.
Halle Kiefer: And we—
Alison Leiby: And watch Jury Duty if you haven’t yet.
Halle Kiefer: [laughs] Watch Jury Duty. And put a tank, put a lid on that huge writhing—
Alison Leiby: Put a lid on your tank full of writhing, hissing Madagascar cockroaches.
Halle Kiefer: For God sakes, women asking for—
Alison Leiby: Get a top on there already.
Halle Kiefer: Get a grip.
Alison Leiby: Get a grip. And also.
Halle Kiefer: And until then, please.
Alison Leiby: Please keep it spooky.
Halle Kiefer: Don’t forget to follow us at Ruined podcast and Crooked Media for show updates. And if you’re as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Ruined is a Radio Point and Crooked Media production. We’re your writers and hosts Halle Kiefer and Alison Leiby. The show is executive produced by Alex Bach, Sabrina Fonfeder and Houston Snyder, and recorded and edited by Kat Iossa. From Crooked Media our executive producer is Kendra James with production and promotional support from Ari Schwartz, Kyle Seglin, Julia Beach, Caroline Dunphy and Ewa Okulate. [music plays]
