Goody Goody and is directed by Raymond Creamer and stars Samantha Robinson, Colleen Foy, Zoë Renee, and Colby Hollman.
TL;DR: Goody Goody has some decent horror ideas and a few genuinely good moments, where the practical effects are probably the strongest part, bu the pacing and some of the film's stranger choices don't work nearly as well.
Plot
A home birth turns terribly wrong when complications arise during a raging blizzard.
The Horror Is Hit and Miss
There are some good moments in Goody Goody to be fair, and the practical effects are probably the thing I liked most, so when the movie gets physical and uncomfortable, it works well enough, where the effects have enough texture to them that they don't feel completely disposable, and there is some good body horror here for anyone who likes their horror a bit grimier.
The problem is that those stronger moments aren't enough to carry the whole movie - a lot of the horror relies on atmosphere and tension, but the atmosphere isn't consistently strong enough to keep the film interesting between the better moments.
It isn't boring from start to finish, but it definitely has patches where the momentum drops, even with Samantha Robinson doing her best with what she has been given, where she brings plenty of intensity to the role, and there are some demanding moments here, and she commits well.
The supporting performances are fine, but nobody else really makes the same impression, and I'd say that's partly down to the way the film is structured - Robinson gets most of the material to work with, while the other characters don't always feel as developed as they could have been.
It Looks Better Than It Plays
Visually, Goody Goody has some decent idea going on - the lighting works well in places, and the film has a look that suits the horror, and it also doesn't have that completely anonymous low-budget appearance that some small horror releases suffer from, with some good uses of sound and atmosphere, too.
But the style can't completely hide the fact that the film is fairly limited - there are times when the movie looks like it has a clear idea of the mood it wants, but the actual scene isn't doing enough to make that mood work, so it ends up much more competent rather than impressive.
And that's probably the best way to describe a lot of the filmmaking here - nothing is particularly terrible, but not enough of it will really stand out, but at around 80 minutes, at least Goody Goody is at not massively overlong.
That said, being short doesn't automatically mean something is well paced, as there are still stretches that feel slower than they should, and some of the material could probably have been tightened further, with a little more urgency in the middle section needed.
Some Ideas Don't Land
There are certainly some interesting ideas buried in here, but the execution isn't always as convincing as it really should be, and the movie often felt like it's reaching for something stranger and more ambitious, only for the result to feel a bit underdeveloped - I don't mind weird horror, quite the opposite, but weirdness needs to feel like it belongs in the movie rather than being there simply to make things more unusual.
The ending was another problem, and I'm not going to get into what happens, but the final section didn't really work for me at all, as. after everything that comes before it, I wanted the movie to finish with a bit more impact, but it all felt slightly underwhelming.
There is a decent horror movie in here somewhere, I just don't think the finished film gets all the way there.
Final Thoughts
There are definitely worse ways to spend 80 minutes, but Goody Goody felt like a pretty meh movie to me - some decent horror buried inside a film that never quite pulls everything together.