Two extraordinary performances carry a cabin birth from dread to full blown horror.
Goody Goody | Review | Ginger Nuts of Horror | Hope Madden
Goody Goody marks a confident feature debut for director Raymond Creamer, working with a tight cast and just two locations to build sustained pregnancy horror in an isolated winter cabin. Samantha Robinson, so memorable in The Love Witch, plays Goody, a mother to be convinced her baby will only know a perfect birth. Colleen Foy plays Sarah, the midwife who reluctantly agrees to help rather than let the family attempt a home birth alone.
Pregnancy and childbirth horror is a crowded corner of the genre, prone to feeling familiar, but Creamer sidesteps that by filtering the dread through Sarah’s growing unease rather than Goody’s. Watching the one competent, controlled character in the room start to worry does more work than another straightforward victim’s eye view could.
Robinson and Foy carry very different registers, one hypnotic and reckless, one anxious and grounded, and the friction between them is what makes the film’s slow pivot from atmospheric dread into full blown creature feature land. This is Hope Madden’s review of Goody Goody for Ginger Nuts of Horror, examining how Creamer’s rustic, dreamlike visuals and two committed lead performances turn a well worn subgenre into something that mostly earns its transformation, reservations about the ending included.
This is a childbirth horror film that finds its dread through the eyes of the person meant to keep everyone calm. Colleen Foy anchors the tension as her midwife starts to fray, while Samantha Robinson turns hypnotic before the story pivots into a full blown creature feature, gorgeous and mesmerising if not fully satisfying by the end.
Goody Goody Review: Raymond Creamer’s Pregnancy Horror Debut
Filmmaker Raymond Creamer made the most of what he had for his feature debut, Goody Goody. What did he have? Four talented actors, two locations, and a knack for atmosphere.
Samantha Robinson (who was utter perfection in 2023’s The Love Witch) is Goody. Goody is pregnant, and she’s creating the beautiful childbirth her baby deserves. She knows that he’ll feel it. He’ll know. It has to be perfect.
Colleen Foy is Sarah, the grownup in the room. Sarah is Goody’s midwife, the one who warned Goody not to give birth in a remote cabin deep in the woods during winter. The only reason Sarah agrees to the job is the fear that Goody, her husband Jayson (Colby Hollman), and his sister Candace (Zoe Renee) will go through with the home birth on their own.
Pregnancy/childbirth horror is so common because it is custom made for the genre. A beast is attempting to burst out of a human body. That human is swollen to a ludicrous degree and is, therefore, wildly handicapped when it comes to things like running or lasting more than ten minutes without having to pee. It is easy to generate dread because, even in real life, it’s terrifying and vulnerable and bloody and it really hurts.
Because it is so common, it can also feel tired. But Creamer develops dread differently. Our point of view is Sarah, the competent one. Watching her grow anxious generates a different kind of dread. When the one who knows what she’s doing is worried, everybody needs to worry.
Foy is remarkable in this role. The way Sarah’s patience and care are soothing but authoritative is a comfort to Goody and family, but also the viewer. As her nerves begin to show wear and tear, we feel more realistically trapped in this nightmare with her.
Robinson’s also wonderful, treading a line between entitled and defenseless, reckless and idealistic. She’s almost hypnotic, almost seductive, and that level of ecstasy helps the film find its tone.
It’s a gorgeous movie. Creamer creates striking moments in a dreamily rustic environment, slowly and quietly introducing the supernatural before pivoting to a full-blown creature feature. The tonal shift wouldn’t work were it not for Robinson’s spellbinding work bumping against Foy’s urgent realism.
For some, it still may not work. The film’s waning moments are mesmerizing, beautiful, and unsatisfying. But for most of Creamer’s 110 minutes, he counted his blessings and made them count.
Hope “Madd at the Movies” Madden, a graduate of The Ohio State University, is a freelance writer and co-founder of maddwolf.com. In addition to 12 years at the award-winning independent weekly newspaper The Other Paper, Hope has written for Columbus Monthly Magazine, The Ohio State University Alumni Magazine, is a published poet and fiction writer. She also currently writes for Columbus Underground, Screen Fervor and the UK Film Review.
Hope’s a member of the Critics Choice Association, the Online Association of Female Film Critics, Columbus Film Critics Association and the Women’s Film Critic Circle. She’s also on the Nightmares Film Festival jury. She co-hosts the weekly movie review podcast The Screening Room and the bi-weekly horror film podcast, Fright Club.
In Columbus, Ohio, you can catch Hope on TV every Friday morning on ABC6/Fox28’s Good Day Columbus.
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