Goody Goody Review: The Demon Is Almost Beside the Point

23 hours ago

7 min read

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT

Goody Goody begins streaming exclusively on Shudder September 18.

Goody Goody understands something a lot of demon baby movies forget. Childbirth does not need a demon to become body horror. The demon is almost rude for showing up.

I have a wife and children. I have stood on the other side of that room while somebody I love did the bleeding, breathing, pushing and hurting. There is a particular kind of uselessness to it. You can hold a hand, say the reassuring thing and try not to look as scared as you are. None of that gives you any control over what the body decides to do next.

So, yes, the opening of Goody Goody hit me pretty hard. Writer and director Raymond Creamer does not offer a polite introduction. Goody is in labor, the pain is real and something feels wrong before the supernatural part has even clocked in. The movie got anxiety out of me early, and it did it honestly. That is a good place for a horror movie to start.

Goody and her husband, Jayson, have chosen a home birth in an isolated house during a winter storm. Sarah, the midwife, warned them about the location and the distance from a hospital. Goody wants the birth she imagined, though, and Jayson's sister Candace is there to help. It probably sounded beautiful when it was still a plan: warm water, quiet woods and the people they chose nearby. Then the snow comes down, the power goes out and a medical professional says they need to leave.

I do not think the movie is arguing that every home birth is reckless. It is more interested in the point where an ideal hardens into something dangerous. Goody wants this experience so badly that every warning begins to sound like an obstacle instead of information. There is something painfully human in that. People do it all the time. We fall in love with the version of life we planned, then get angry when reality refuses to read the script.

The film has already established most of that before the title sequence. An early conversation between Sarah and Goody is staged around a mirror, keeping the women visually connected while separating them inside the frame. I like that shot because it has an opinion. They are looking at the same birth from two different realities. Goody sees the experience she wants. Sarah sees all the things that can go wrong and knows she will be the one standing in the blood if they do. One composition does work that a worse movie would hand to a page of dialogue.

Tristan Noelle's cinematography is probably the strongest part of Goody Goody. Limited location movies can start showing their budget pretty quickly. The same wall comes back, and the same hallway walks into another scene wearing a fake mustache. Everything gets covered in close-ups because there is nowhere left to put the camera. That does not happen much here. The house keeps changing as Goody's condition gets worse. Rooms that initially feel private and warm begin to feel small, airless and very far from help.

Then the power dies and the movie somehow gets prettier. Candlelight is a cinematographer's dream until somebody actually has to photograph it. Faces need to stay readable, shots need to match and the darkness has to feel like darkness without turning the movie into a black rectangle. Noelle pulls it off. The candlelit interiors and the exterior work in the snow look pretty darn good, especially for a film spending most of its time trapped in one house. Some of its prettiest images arrive while a woman is going through absolute hell. Movies are funny that way.

That control carries into the exterior work after the outage. Shooting a dark winter exterior beside candlelit interiors is the kind of problem that can make separate parts of a movie look as if they wandered in from different productions. Noelle keeps them together. The location never feels like a cheap house the production happened to have access to. It feels like the worst possible place these people could be.

Colleen Foy is the anchor as Sarah. She gives the character professional focus without turning her into one of those movie experts who always has the answer until the script needs her not to. Sarah knows enough to be terrified first. You can see her trying to keep doing the job while the job mutates into something with no training manual. Foy is especially good when Sarah has to swallow her fear and give the next instruction anyway. Panic is a luxury when everybody else has decided you are in charge.

Zoe Renee gets a nice early monologue as Candace, Jayson's sister, and becomes more important as the situation collapses. Her work with Foy gives the final stretch its desperation. They keep searching for one more practical thing they can do even after the birth stops behaving like anything practical. Love and good intentions are not a hospital, but they are all these women have left.

Samantha Robinson is a little more uneven as Goody. Early on, some of the softness feels put on, almost as if Goody is still performing the calm, beautiful version of motherhood she planned for herself. A few lines come across cheesier than I think the movie intends, and the dialogue does not always help her. I wanted a little less serenity and a little more person.

Once the contractions intensify and the power fails, Robinson is outstanding. The performance becomes frighteningly physical. Pain strips away the version of Goody she was trying to present and leaves somebody trapped inside a body she no longer understands.

Then something appears to crawl beneath her stomach.

Oh boy.

The effect works because it does not replace Robinson's performance. It corrupts it. The pain was already difficult to watch, and now the body itself seems to be keeping a secret from the woman living inside it. That is where Goody Goody finds its best horror. The creature is not frightening only because it is demonic. It is frightening because Goody cannot get away from it. It is under the skin, behind the pain and on its way out.

Goody's monologue in the birthing pool gives Robinson another strong moment. By then, the movie has made it pretty clear that this is not a normal baby, and I started wondering whether Goody and Jayson knew more than they had admitted. I do not think the film ever gives us enough reason to believe they did. Jayson is no longer there to help by the time Sarah and Candace face the worst of it, and his absence leaves a hole beyond the obvious practical one. I did not need somebody explaining the mythology to death, but I wanted a little more about why this family, why this birth and whether any choice beyond the location brought them here.

The final twenty minutes are hard to watch, and not because they are boring or because the movie has fallen apart. I mean I physically caught myself bracing for it. By that point I was no longer sitting there admiring the composition or thinking about where the camera was placed. Sarah and Candace are trying to save Goody, the room has become a mess of pain and fear, and the movie has earned the right to make the audience uncomfortable.

The effects team does strong work when the baby finally comes out. The image of the creature being pulled from Goody is the one that stays with me. Wow. Sometimes the honest critical vocabulary runs out and that is what is left. The thing is nasty, sad and unreal, but the human desperation around it keeps the moment from becoming a simple monster reveal.

Then Sarah bites through the umbilical cord.

That was a little much for me. The extraction had already done the damage. The baby was enough. Believe me, the baby was enough. The film had gotten the reaction and then reached back into the wound for one more. I do not mind gross, but by then it felt extra. Some viewers will probably love that moment. I was already sold before the teeth came out.

The ending is surreal and leaves several questions lying around the room. I am fine with ambiguity. Horror should not always hand us a folder explaining the demon, its childhood and what it hopes to accomplish in the next five years. Still, there is a difference between mystery and a missing piece. I was not always sure which one Goody Goody had given me.

The dialogue has a similar problem in a few of the quieter scenes. It is not awful, but it occasionally sounds written in a movie that otherwise feels sweaty and immediate. Once the labor becomes dangerous, the actors have something physical to fight and the words matter less. Earlier, when the movie needs conversation to build character, some of those lines sit there waiting to be acted.

Demonic pregnancy is not fresh territory, and Goody Goody does not completely reinvent it. What separates the movie is its interest in the labor itself. A cheaper, dumber version would treat childbirth as a delivery system for the monster and spend eighty minutes waiting for the creature. Creamer understands that the body, the isolation and the terrible distance from help are already the movie. The demon just makes the situation official.

This is an effective limited location horror film with strong cinematography, committed performances and a final act that made me cringe more than once. The mythology could use another piece, some of the dialogue needs another pass, and Robinson takes a little time to find the version of Goody that works. None of that erases what the movie does well.

I did not love Goody Goody. I did feel it, sometimes in places I would have preferred not to. For this movie, that counts for quite a bit.

6.3/10

A screener of Goody Goody was provided for review purposes.