Motherhood Takes a Monstrous Turn

MOVIE REVIEWS
Goody Goody
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Genre: Horror, Thriller, Suspense
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 1h 20m
Director: Raymond Creamer
Writer: Raymond Creamer
Cast: Samantha Robinson, Colleen Foy, Zoe Renee, Colby Hollman
Where to Watch: streaming on Shudder September 18, 2026

RAVING REVIEW: Sarah seems to be the only one who knows this is a bad idea before anything actually goes wrong. GOODY GOODY doesn’t begin by asking us to wonder whether the secluded home birth is risky. Midwife Sarah has already done that, voiced her concerns, and reluctantly shown up anyway because the alternative may be leaving an expectant mother to attempt it without someone qualified. Horror usually gets a lot of mileage out of people ignoring obvious warning signs. However, writyer/director Raymond Creamer’s film is more interesting when it concentrates on the person who recognizes every warning sign and still feels morally obligated to stay.

Goody, played by Samantha Robinson, is determined to give birth at home with her husband, Jayson, and his sister, Candace, there to help her through it. The remote location would already make Sarah uncomfortable, but the blizzard outside turns an inadvisable situation into one without an easy escape. As the labor continues and complications become increasingly difficult to explain, Sarah has to balance Goody’s wishes against what her experience keeps telling her needs to happen. The supernatural possibility hanging over the birth is scary enough, yet the tension comes from watching someone trained to handle emergencies realize that training may not be enough.

Colleen Foy is absolutely excellent in that role. Sarah spends much of the movie trying to stay the calmest person in the room, and Foy understands that playing the competent one can be far more interesting than constantly showing the fear the situation brings. You can watch her process everything, adjust, try to reassure herself and everyone else, reconsider, and become more alarmed without the movie needing to explain it all. Her performance gives GOODY GOODY a practical foundation that keeps the strange stuff from overwhelming the movie, because Sarah keeps approaching impossible circumstances as problems that should have rational solutions.

Robinson’s role as Goody needs to be stubborn enough that her decisions frustrate us without becoming “too much” for us to stop believing anyone would keep helping her. Robinson gives that stubbornness an eerie serenity, playing someone so certain she knows what’s best for herself and her child, even when circumstances are almost literally screaming otherwise. The clash between Goody’s confidence and Sarah’s expertise becomes one of the film’s most intriguing sources of tension, especially because neither woman can just walk away from what’s happening.

Creamer confines most of GOODY GOODY to the house, and that restriction helps the story work. The storm outside eliminates options, while the rooms inside gradually feel smaller as the night goes on. The characters have nowhere to redirect their attention. Every conversation eventually comes back to the birth, every occurrence raises another concern, and every passing minute makes outside help less likely. The isolation isn’t complicated, but it’s effective.

The movie also understands that childbirth already gives horror filmmakers plenty to work with before adding anything supernatural. People acting in unfamiliar ways, pain that has to be endured rather than escaped, blood, uncertainty, and the knowledge that something living is about to emerge from another person don’t require much embellishment. GOODY GOODY wisely spends much of its runtime letting the ordinary realities of labor create discomfort before pushing them into something else.

That patience is one of the biggest reasons I can’t quite push the rating higher. An 80-minute movie shouldn’t feel this long. Yet portions of the second act feel like they repeat the same pattern. We see something concerning happen, Sarah looks at the situation, Goody, of course, resists, and the anxiety starts climbing again. The repetition makes sense within a prolonged labor. Though it occasionally feels like the movie holds itself back because it knows the more extreme things need to happen later.

The film also leaves questions unanswered, and not all that ambiguity feels as productive. Horror doesn’t owe us a detailed explanation of every strange occurrence, and GOODY GOODY is better off preserving some mystery around what’s happening. At times, withholding information feels less like maintaining uncertainty and more like leaving pieces of the story underdeveloped. The movie gives us enough to understand the danger but not always enough to make its mythology as compelling as the situation we’re in.

Creamer resists overloading the movie with jump scares. GOODY GOODY is much more interested in discomfort, the strange physical details, and the possibility that something is just outside our understanding. Some images register almost subliminally before becoming harder to dismiss, and the movie lets suspicion sit in the room rather than confirming everything. That restraint makes the eventual body horror far more effective because the film spends so much time forcing us to wait for the situation to break finally.

When it does, the practical effects become a major part of the appeal. The film gets increasingly grotesque without suddenly feeling like an entirely different movie, largely because childbirth has already established such a physical foundation for everything that follows. Creamer doesn’t treat the violence as an unrelated final-act attraction. The imagery feels like an escalation of everything Goody’s body has already endured, pushed beyond what should be possible.

There’s an amusing contradiction in how GOODY GOODY handles control. Goody has carefully constructed everything that’s meant to give her control over childbirth; Sarah relies on her earned knowledge to maintain control in dangerous situations; and everyone is trapped by weather that none of them can control. Then something enters the equation that renders both personal and medical expertise increasingly useless. The movie keeps stripping away the characters’ ability to control what happens until simply getting through the night becomes the only realistic objective.

That’s why Sarah ultimately becomes the character I'm most invested in. She isn’t there because she shares Goody’s philosophy, and she doesn’t need a supernatural threat to validate her concerns. She stays because leaving could make a dangerous situation worse, which traps her in the awful position of being responsible for helping somebody whose choices have made that help considerably harder. That frustration gives this more impact than it would if the movie were simply waiting for something unknown to arrive.

GOODY GOODY doesn’t reinvent pregnancy horror, and there are points where its slow escalation could use a little tightening. The premise eventually takes turns horror fans will most definitely recognize, while the unanswered parts of the story may leave some viewers wanting a stronger payoff. Yet Creamer knows exactly where the movie’s strongest moments lie, and he keeps the focus tight rather than padding an 80-minute story with wasted space.

Most importantly, the film remembers that the birth itself should remain frightening even after the supernatural elements begin competing for attention. Foy and Robinson keep that struggle of humanity alive underneath the blood and increasingly bizarre complications, giving GOODY GOODY enough grounding to survive. It may take a little too long getting to the best parts, but once this delivery goes off the rails, there’s no confusing it with an ordinary night of labor.

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[photo courtesy of SHUDDER]

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