10 Horror Reveals Nobody Was Ready For

7. It Was All A Coping Mechanism - Goodnight Mommy

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Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's Goodnight Mommy is a film that spends so much time teasing you with one thing, only to pull the rug out from under you and deliver something entirely different.

In this 2014 picture, a mother returns home to her twin boys after she's had some plastic surgery carried out. With her face largely covered by bandages, and with her acting strangely, the twins start to suggest that this isn't actually their real mother, and instead it's an imposter posing as their ma.

From there, we see the duo of Elias and Lukas go to the extreme lengths of tying their "mother" to a bed, gluing her mouth together, allowing her to wet herself, and then they eventually superglue her to the living room floor as they demand she explains to them what has happened to their real mother.

The kicker here, is that this is their real mother - and the twist is that Lukas has actually been dead the entire time.

Having gone insane after the death of his brother, Elias had been imagining his twin brother at his side as a coping mechanism to deal with this loss. But by the time all is said and done, his grip on reality is so far gone that he ends up burning his mother alive, with his own fate left ambiguous by the time Goodnight Mommy draws to a close.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.