‘Other Mommy’ Review – Intriguing Premise Wasted on Sloppy Execution

Kudos to the person or team that was responsible for cutting the first trailer for Other Mommy, a supernatural psychological horror film directed by Rob Savage. The trailer garnered a lot of attention when it was shown ahead of screenings of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which was a smart move to unleash a horror preview on the unsuspecting audience of a Nolan epic. Seeing its star, Jessica Chastain, all twisted up under a table made packed theaters jump out of their seats, and suddenly everyone wanted to know what was up with the “Other Mommy.” Given its prime October release date and the promise from that first look, one hoped that we had another horror winner on our hands but upon viewing the rather brisk 93-minute film based on the 2024 novel Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman, Other Mommy feels more like a January horror movie release (Blumhouse is no stranger to these financially successful but creatively limp entries) that is only elevated by Chastain and honestly, the comitted performance of the young Arabella Olivia Clark who is being terroized by an entity that looks just like her mother, but with one hell of a creepy smile. Other Mommy might have an interesting setup, but it quickly falls into silliness and can’t really pick a tonal lane that benefits it before things turn into a muddled mess.

Young Bella (Clark) is having a hard time adjusting at her new school and is dealing with the growing distance between her parents, Ursula (Chastain), who has made her corporate career her priority, and Russ (Jay Duplass), who has taken on the role of unemployed househusband and primary caretaker of Bella in the home while his wife continues to be consumed by work. Perhaps this is why Bella begins to encounter a supernatural entity that resembles her mother, whom she refers to as “Other Mommy.” This “Other Mommy” might seem gentle at first, but her encounters with Bella grow more frightening as she asks to be let into her heart and begins to follow her outside of her bedroom. She can change shape and even distort her surroundings. As for being let into her heart, that request doesn’t come off as a metaphor when she attempts to force her way into her.

Horror movies have had their fair share of mileage off of the things that children can see and experience that don’t quite make sense to the adults around them. Something is striking about the innocence and vulnerability of young children that makes this horror trope work. The audience is invested in their safety, and Other Mommy, when it works, mostly does because of Clark’s performance as Bella. Her reaction to the “Other Mommy” works on a couple of levels. It’s clear that Bella is caught in the middle of her parents’ marital strife, so she gets some initial happiness from the attention the entity gives to her, but once the entity grows more violent, the danger it presents to Bella becomes more palpable.

The problem with Other Mommy is that it tries to be several different films at once with this story, and none of them really work as a whole. Is the film scary? It has some moments of chills, but it’s mostly a jump-scare fest, something that was widely reported, as it was declared the movie had about 50 of them (that was a lie to potentially lure in audiences because it doesn’t come close to that number). The scenes that were obviously conceived to generate scares descend into straight camp (a scene where the entity grows to an enormous size, complete with a giant hand to crush Bella, elicited laughs from the screening I attended).

Screenwriter Nathan Elston, working from Malerman’s source material, also wants the film to clearly represent Bella’s trauma due to the lack of attention from her real mom and the effects it has had on her father, but it gets lost at times because once that angle gets interesting, Other Mommy rather latch onto another asinine idea that makes the film even more of an incoherent misfire.

Beyond the opening jump-scare sequence, which is effective, Other Mommy struggles as it moves from set piece to set piece, with the family attempting to run away from “Other Mommy” once they realize what their daughter is experiencing is very real. The problem with this is that the film begins to become repetitive, and Savage, who showed directorial promise with Host and, to a lesser extent, The Boogeyman, doesn’t utilize the best of his abilities to make these structural moves even remotely interesting. Horror films can make escalating fear through their sequences work (Resident Evil is a prime recent example), but the sequences have to offer a diversity of scares. Other Mommy doesn’t really shift its horror gears. You just move from one bad CGI rendering of Jessica Chastain emerging to a loud horror film stinger in the music that just becomes more tedious rather than scary.

Beyond Clark’s Bella, Chastain is clearly having fun taking on dual roles, and she does bring a bit of prestige to the project that would be largely absent had she not been involved. Some have said that her “Other Mommy” smile and occasional dead stares are more funny than frightening, but imagine seeing that in your room at night when you’re a kid and you realize that Chastain is locked in on generating chills through her performance. Oddly enough, both aspects of her characters represent the tonal identity crisis the film is having. As Ursula, Chastain hits some serious notes that feel like they belong in a different and better movie, while her appearances as the entity embrace the horror campiness that the movie frequently falls into. It’s honestly not a bad performance, but it’s not enough to save Other Mommy from itself.

The situation grows sillier when Other Mommy attempts to go down the Insidious route. The movie introduces ghost hunters into the plot with Lois (Dichen Lachman) leading the crew. Not only is their inclusion uninspired, but it does more to take away from what is clearly the film’s central theme of familial trauma and child neglect. Had the film kept its focus here, and maybe taken things a bit more seriously, Other Mommy could’ve been a scary exercise in the monsters that haunt us as kids when we’re feeling absolutely alone and neglected. Instead, the monsters come off as something to laugh at and not to be feared.

Other Mommy is now playing in theaters nationwide.