University of Hertfordshire

This chapter examines the Austrian film Goodnight Mommy in the context of the Gothic genre, and will, in doing so, interrogate this ‘peculiarly visual’ element as a necessary condition for a Gothic film, since the film does not, at first sight, appear to carry these specific visual markers frequently associated with the genre. It argues that this film – originally titled Ich Seh, Ich Seh, or I See, I See – is Gothic less because of any visual markers, and more because of what remains visually ambiguous, and indeed invisible, throughout the film. Goodnight Mommy focuses on a mother and her 10-year-old twin sons Elias and Lukas, who inhabit a large, modern house in the Austrian countryside. The relationship between the senses and Mommy’s status as a trapped Gothic heroine – both figuratively and literally – also connects with one of the central features of the genre: the female protagonist’s search for the solution of a central mystery.