Other Mommy Review: Jessica Chastain’s Horror Film Starts with a Scream, Ends with a Shrug

There is a particular kind of disappointment that only horror fans know: the film that grabs you in its first half-hour, makes you check the dark corners of the room, and then slowly lets go of your hand. Other Mommy is that film. It opens with real promise, delivers a handful of genuinely effective scares, and then fizzles into an average, forgettable watch.

A pedigree that promised more

On paper, Other Mommy had everything going for it. Director Rob Savage made his name with Host and The Boogeyman, and producer James Wan is the mind behind Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring. The screenplay is by Nathan Elston, a writer on Succession, adapted from Josh Malerman’s bestselling novel Incidents Around the House. Malerman also wrote Bird Box, so expectations were naturally high.

The premise is a strong one. Bela, an eight-year-old girl in a home strained by her parents’ marital troubles, faces a sinister entity that emerges from her closet, a presence she calls “Other Mommy” that grows steadily more threatening to her family. Jessica Chastain plays both Ursula, Bela’s mother, and the entity, with Jay Duplass as Bela’s father and Arabella Olivia Clark as Bela.

A child’s closet, a monster wearing her mother’s face, a family already cracking at the seams: this is fertile ground for horror. The film just doesn’t dig deep enough.

A strong start

Credit where it is due. The first act works. Savage knows how to build atmosphere in a confined domestic space, and the early scenes have a creeping, unsettling quality. The closet becomes a source of real dread. Ordinary corners of the house feel wrong. The camera lingers just long enough to make you scan the background for something that shouldn’t be there.

The jump scares in this stretch land well. They are timed with precision, and a couple of them earn a genuine jolt from the audience. The idea of a monster that looks exactly like a child’s mother is quietly disturbing, and in these early moments the film seems ready to exploit that fear to its fullest.

For roughly the first act, Other Mommy feels like it might become one of the better studio horror films of the year.

Then the tension evaporates

And then it doesn’t. Somewhere past the setup, the film loses its grip, and the tension evaporates far too quickly. Once the rules of the entity are established, the mystery stops deepening. The scares become predictable, the dread thins out, and the story begins to repeat itself rather than escalate.

Good horror tightens the screws as it goes. Other Mommy loosens them. The middle stretch drifts, offering little to look forward to and few reasons to feel afraid. The family drama, which should have given the horror its emotional weight, is underdeveloped, so the supernatural threat never quite connects with anything that matters. Overall, there is very little horror here for a film sold as a terrifying ride.

The performances

Jessica Chastain is committed to her dual role, and she does what she can to separate the warm, weary mother from the uncanny double. But the script gives her limited material, and the “Other Mommy” side never becomes as frightening as it should. Arabella Olivia Clark is a capable young lead and carries several scenes with conviction. Jay Duplass is solid but underused, and the supporting cast, including Dichen Lachman and Karen Allen, has little room to make an impression.

An average ending

The climax could have rescued the film. It doesn’t. The ending is as average as the hour before it, wrapping things up without the punch, surprise or lingering chill a horror finale needs. You leave the theatre without the unease that great horror leaves behind, and with the nagging sense that a better film was hiding in the first twenty minutes.

The verdict

Other Mommy is an average watch. It starts well, delivers a few solid jump scares and boasts a strong cast and creative team, but it runs out of steam far too soon. The horror is thin, the tension fades fast, and the ending is forgettable.

Watch it if you’re in the mood for a Halloween-season scare and have modest expectations. Just don’t expect it to keep you up at night.