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The buzz surrounding the viral, limb-bending trailer of pre-Halloween horror Other Mommy was such that screen grabs became memes, official YouTube channel views ran up to 30m-plus and BuzzFeed used the extremely BuzzFeed headline: “The Lady Sitting Next To Me SCREAMED”: This Trailer Playing Before The Odyssey Is Scaring Moviegoers, And These Hilarious Reactions Have Me Crying.
Sure, Universal releasing it exclusively attached to the second biggest film of the year played a considerable part but the imagery was efficiently direct and frightening, a derivative scared child/creepy demon set-up turned into something that felt hard to deny and increasingly impossible to avoid. But then what had seemed like the surest slam-dunk horror of the season seemed to slither away. The marketing continued (there was a second trailer that didn’t quite break the internet in the same way) but the reviews never appeared, a choice made to hide the film from critics until the day it opened. It’s a strategic decision that implies a disaster, Universal eager to keep pre-ticket sales high (it’s predicted to win the weekend with $20m-plus) and bad reviews at bay. But instead, as is often the case, it’s less of a one-star train wreck and more of a two-star mess, likely to frustrate rather than enrage.
It’s based on the Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s acclaimed novel Incidents Around the House and the more obvious title change is the clearest indication of what’s shifted from page to screen. Other Mommy is less interested in the slow-burn and more focused on the instant blaze, a rickety fairground ride filled with loud jolts and skin-tearing gore. British director Rob Savage has bragged that his film features 50 jump scares, that’s about one every two minutes, a boast that also indicates his exhausting priorities.
What’s strange is how unjumpy the film then is and how more interesting it feels when Savage isn’t trying to spill our popcorn. The Other Mommy is a double of working mother Ursula (Jessica Chastain), who has become a secret friend of young daughter Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark). She’s a demon who wants to become human and by impersonating Bela’s mother, she hopes that faking a deep connection will allow her “into her heart”. In a rather rushed fashion, Other Mommy’s campaign goes from teaser to full-court press.
Chastain is an actor who isn’t always a great fit, her admirable avoidance of being typecast leading to a too-wide variety of roles that just don’t always feel well suited. But her elegant iciness works wonders here, selling both a hard-working parent who struggles to soften at home and an untrustworthy monster trying to find the right emotional mode and facial expressions to convince a child that she isn’t nefarious. Both mommies are desperate to win her over and Chastain works hard to win us over in the process even if her overpronounced smile, used as the poster’s main image, is a little too reminiscent of the Smile series.
The rules of Other Mommy can also get a little scrambled. In trying to make Bela believe she is the gentle, loving and understanding parent she really needs, I’m not quite sure why she would keep presenting in such ghoulish and monstrous ways other than to scare those of us watching. The little blips are effective – the wrong amount of fingers, an accidental skin slip on her face – but too soon we have full-on gloopy body horror. The film can often feel like a loosely connected series of set pieces rather than a complete and cohesive story, something Chastain has experienced before in the It movies, which felt more like overlong trailers.
Savage managed to make one of the only genuinely necessary Covid movies with the ingenious Zoom horror Host, but his studio outings have so far lacked the same creative spark. Technically he proves himself once again here – as he did in the slickly made yet generic Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman – but he’s in danger of becoming a studio horror director for hire rather than one with his own clear voice. There’s a slight sense of confused panic to his choices as he throws a little too much at the wall, Other Mommy’s abilities and guises so varied that she starts to lose any real distinctiveness as a villain, turning into just some industry standard monster to be mechanically expelled. It’s even more of problem when the set-up of the film itself is already so familiar (even in the last decade, it recalls Imaginary, M3gan, Z and Come Play) and, as is often the case with so many horror films in this moment, a lot less would do so much more.
It’s also unclear how the two worlds are separated and operate, and while it’s refreshing to see characters all on the same page early on (both parents see Other Mommy within the first 20ish minutes), it’s then a struggle for the Succession screenwriter Nathan Elston to convincingly choreograph what comes next. Wouldn’t dad be a little more horrified earlier? Wouldn’t the police come calling after a gnarly midpoint death? Wouldn’t they not risk letting their daughter out of their sight? It’s amusingly grounded for a while (do we Google priests or mediums?) and there’s a neat and funny twist on what’s otherwise a rote Insidious-aping sequence, but the smarter ideas are mostly picked up briefly then dropped in favour of more basic funhouse horror. The psychological chaos inflicted by Other Mommy – pitting Bela against her parents, doing her bidding to try to impress her, forcing her to decide between the love she wants and the love she needs – is far scarier than yet more snappy but repetitive VFX. This wrestle is most apparent in the finale, which goes full house-rattling Poltergeist hokum and lightens the novel’s bleaker ending.
There’s a chillier, quieter version of Other Mommy that could have really crept under our skin, but Savage is too busy trying to give us a heart attack to care if he gives us nightmares.
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Other Mommy is out in cinemas now
English (US) ·