Written and directed by Raymond Creamer, during a long home birth process, expecting parents and their midwife begin to realize that something may be horribly wrong. As labour complications ensue, a blizzard rages outside trapping the family in their home – sitting ducks for whatever sinister presence might be in there with them. Starring: Samantha Robinson, Colleen Foy, Zoë Renee and Colby Hollman.
For anyone who knows the basics of how the birth process works, there’s an immediate problem with Goody Goody, because it feels like Raymond Creamer doesn’t. While suspending disbelief is certainly a part of cinema, especially horror, making the very basic mistake of not understanding the correlation of contractions to dilation when your whole film is about giving birth, is asking a little too much. Particularly when viewers might already be wary of going into a pregnancy story primarily made by men, which is a valid concern in this day and age.
It highlights the key problem with Goody Goody, which is not inaccuracy, but its heavy-handedness. It gives you basically the entire story from the beginning so there’s nowhere for it to go. It’s attempting to build to a bloody finale, but it takes so long to get there, and so little happens in the meantime, that its ending falls flat. Considering the whole film is an emergency, it surprisingly lacks a sense of urgency, it indulgently takes its time.
Something which is then exacerbated by having only four characters, two of whom are genuinely annoying. Samantha Robinson’s titular Goody is a giant pain in the ass, and her husband Jayson played by Colby Hollman, is entirely useless. In a larger cast it wouldn’t be an issue, it’s no irregularity for horror, but within this intimate setting, while the intentions of the writing do make sense, it doesn’t work well.
Whereas Colleen Foy’s midwife Sarah and Zoë Renee’s doula Candace are very welcome additions. They add so much personality, a sense of humour, and sarcasm, which are so desperately needed. It’s only a shame they don’t really get to come into their own until the final act, which ideally should have been more like the mid-point to enjoy the mayhem of Goody Goody. They’re a great duo and are definitely one of the key elements to keep viewers watching.
Goody Goody is disappointingly simple, we’ve seen so many stories like this before, and it doesn’t really have anything new to add to the conversation. While the visual style is well done and there’s a nice bit of body horror, it meanders and doesn’t come to a satisfying resolution, rather the opposite. Colleen Foy and Zoë Renee are excellent, and given a better story to work with, they could have made this into something memorable. It’s intensely in need of a woman’s touch to get to grips with such women-driven subject matter.
