What really happened to Lucas?

Good night mom has an ending that may shock and confuse viewers, but clues are scattered throughout 2002's psychological horror if one pays close enough attention. A remake of the 2014 Austrian ghost story of the same title, the Amazon Prime version of Good night mom was directed by Matt Sobel and stars Naomi Watts as the unnamed mother character, and Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti as twin brothers, Elias and Lukas. The film premiered on Amazon Prime Video on September 16, 2021, to lukewarm reviews and a 37% rating. Rotten tomatoes.

In Good night momtwo twin boys, Elias and Lukas, lived with their father after their parents' divorce. When the time finally comes to return to their estranged mother, a former actress, they are startled to discover that she has covered her entire head with bandages, saying she has had cosmetic surgery. Troubled by his erratic behavior and neglect, the boys begin to suspect that the woman beneath the bandages is not their mother. Ultimately, Good night mom It's a film about fatherhood and the scares and doubts don't end until the final scene.

Lukas and Elias capture their mother and leave her for dead

Twins notice their mother's eye color has changed

After being forgotten, yelled at and even hit at one point, Elias and Lukas decide to run away from home. They find a nearby abandoned house and stay the night, only to be tracked down by police officers. The state troopers don't believe the boys' story about someone else posing as their mother in their home, and they are sent home. The mother angrily locks them in the room, and although she has already removed the bandages and they still don't fully recognize her, she insists that her children are imagining things.

Mom certainly isn't imagining things when she wakes up tied to her bed with duct tapeand his boys at the foot of the bed. The brothers want to know why their mother's eyes are a different color than in a photo taken years ago. She says she wore green contact lenses when she was still taking the test. The mother tells them to look in her bag. Lukas does this, but doesn't find the contacts. Although Elias is hesitant, Lukas encourages him to leave his mother tied up and the brothers wait outside for a taxi.

Elias frees his mother and discovers the truth about Lukas

Lukas is a figment of Elias' imagination

As the twins wait on the side of the road, Elias' fears overcome him, and he tells Lukas that he forgot his toothbrush and runs back home. Elias searches his mother's bag and finds the contact lenses that his brother failed to find, despite being at the top of the contents. As he pulls them out, Lukas suddenly appears behind him and begs him not to release his mother and let Lukas explain. Elias ignores him and runs to the room to free his mother, while Lukas disappears somewhere.

His shaken mother takes Elias sternly to the barn, the one she banned the boys from entering, and shows him a blood-stained wall with a bullet hole in the middle. As Elijah stares at the wall, memories come back and the big twist of Good night mom is revealed. Years ago, while playing together, Elias accidentally shot Lukas and killed him. Since then, he has hallucinated that his twin brother was still alive. Lukas' death also sent Elias' mother into a spiral of grief, resulting in her divorce and estrangement.

Elijah pushes his mother out of the barn

Elijah can't deal with the fact that he murdered his brother

For the first time in the film, the mother tries to comfort her son. She refused to sing him his bedtime story, wouldn't look him in the eye, didn't offer him any motherly warmth, and even hit him hard enough to break his lip. All of this was a coping mechanism for the mother who partially blamed Ellias for her son's death and who was simply overcome with grief at having lost one of her children in such a tragic way. It certainly wasn't a healthy coping mechanism, but at the same time, her confusion, anger, and sadness are understandable.

Elias killing Lukas was an accident, though, and he was hurting just as much as his mother. He needed his mother's love. If he had, he might not have created a hallucination in Lukas and forced himself to forget the horrible act he was involved in. All of these emotions come together at once and Elijah breaks down, lashing out at his mother in confused rage. . He pushes his mother from the barn, killing her. Her lantern breaks and the barn catches fire with her inside as Elias stumbles out.

Elias drags himself through the nearby farms before collapsing, sobbing at what he did and what he remembered. Then a familiar hand grabs your shoulder and lifts you back up. Lucas is back. Smiling, he hugs his brother and says he didn't do anything wrong. Elias then sees a hallucination of his mother, who joins Lukas in hugging Elias. The boy once again fell into his delusions, now adding another guest to keep him and Lukas company.

The true meaning of the ending of good night, mom

Mother discovers too late that her living son still needs her

A horror movie like Good night mom attempts to tell a deeper story about the human condition, using the tropes of the genre to help with this retelling. It's a classic formula, especially for horror films in the modern era, where films like The Babadook, The Night Houseand He follows they often serve as analogies for a larger idea. It's heightened terror and although that has become a dirty phrase, Some of the biggest horror films of the last decade fall under the banner of “elevated horror”.

Good night mom it's about fatherhood, especially motherhood, if the title isn't a hint. It is deliberate not to name the character mother, because anyone could be that character. She had to face a tragedy that no one should have to face, but that doesn't excuse her reaction to it. That's the problem with being a parent. There are times when parents' feelings must be secondary to those of their children, even when the child in question is responsible for the great pain that the parents feel.

Until the end of Good night momthe mother treats Elias with contempt, and this is understandable, to a certain extent. However, she doesn't realize the damage she is causing until it is too late. When she finally realizes this and tries to comfort her son, Elijah is too far gone. The only comfort he knows is what he has created in his mind. So if his mother wants to comfort him, Elijah is going to have to hallucinate her, and if that involves murder, so be it.