FROM FEAR TO MATERNITY
OTHER MOMMY (15)
Director: Rob Savage
Screenplay: Nathan Elston, Josh Mallerman
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass, Arabella Olivia Clark
Running time: 93 minutes
Cinema
Review: David Stephens
Okay, so Other Mommy is a bloody awful film title, especially in the UK, where swapping the ‘U’ for an ‘O’ in ‘Mum’ terminology qualifies an instant eye-roll. Still, Other Mother was already iconic from Coraline (2005), and “Scammy Mammy” has been genuinely used in catfishing documentaries (and is presumably copyrighted for the next Mrs Brown’s Boys project shudder). But ignoring all that, this film has an interesting pedigree. Jessica Chastain is no stranger to horror, having been in Mama (2013) and Crimson Peak (2015), not to mention IT: Chapter 2 (2019). And director Rob Savage has proven form with Host (2020) and The Boogeyman (2023). The plot is based on the 2024 novel Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman, which has a sturdy reputation. So, a combination of all three should be a lock-in for success, right? Well, the first trailer (with a physically crumpled Chastain doing a jump scare in a family kitchen) went viral for its effectiveness, and hopes were high. But then previews were skipped, and the critics smelled blood. As it opened on UK and US screens, sure enough, professional critics ripped it to shreds, and it holds a pearl-clutching dismal 19% on Rotten Tomatoes as we write this review. Oof! So why all the vitriol? Is it really the mother of bad movies, or is this just a case of ‘conscious uncoupling’ by movie snobs?
It starts with groovy fun-dad Russ Martin (Jay Duplass) dancing around with his adorable seven-year-old daughter Bella (Arabella Olivia Clark) at bedtime. The mother (Chastain as Ursula) pops her head around the door to cast a disapproving eyebrow and encourage sleepy time. At which point, Bella starts to talk to someone out of sight called ‘Other Mommy’ (OM from now on…). The next morning, Ursula marches off to her corporate job, and stay-at-home Russ dozes off (apparently after a quick toke). At this point, the lonely girl is surprised to see her mother return from work incredibly early and start to lovingly engage with her. Only… it’s actually OM, having become an almost perfect doppelganger of Ursula and leaving the bedroom to give a sinister proposal to Bella. Interrupted by Russ (who gets the ever-loving shit scared out of him… as seen in the trailer… and this is all before the title screen), it marks a change in the mysterious entity’s behaviour. Now saying that she wants to ‘get inside the heart’ of Bella, it means the parents must confront the demonic presence to protect their girl from having her existence erased. But to do so will mean accepting their own failings and admitting some uncomfortable secrets.
Make no mistake. This is in no way a ‘good’ film, but it is a welcome soft entry into the spooky season and is not as awful as most critics would have you believe. Having said that, there is a lot of baggage to pick holes in and plenty of reasons to consider giving it a miss should you need them. Tonally, the narrative is like a dark fairy-tale very close to Coraline in style and content, but with the spectral insanity of the original Poltergeist (1982). It makes for an odd mix that doesn’t necessarily mesh together and is probably the main reason why people have slated it with such a vengeance. For something that takes place primarily from the POV of a young child, it doesn’t scrimp on the swearing or carnage. As well as some juvenile takes on complicated subjects and real-world consequences being ignored, we’re treated to one of the most graphic head explosions (in slo-mo, no less!) since Scanners, a bloody jaw injury, and a brief glimpse of a bisected girl. From the creepiest of starts, it goes to bombastic SFX that belittle any choice of subtle messages and dilute the viewpoint being given from an innocent. Imagine The Witches (1990), but with scenes from The Evil Dead edited into it!
It’s not just the tonal shifts and weird logic that make the film less effective; it’s the double-edged sword that the narrative presents which causes some problems. To start with, it’s extremely refreshing to have Bella believed almost at once. We don’t have the tropes of a young girl having her terrifying woes being blamed on an overactive imagination or mischievous intent. With OM revealing herself at relatively early stages in the plot, the parents have little choice but to believe in the existence of the entity and run from it. Instantly, this does away with all interminable and frustrating scenes we would have had with Bella in therapy with a child psychiatrist or the parents being investigated for child abuse. We are so over those tropes. However, this also presents quite a few scenes and situations that defy logic. Police being contacted about doppelgangers, parties cancelled due to ghosts, people dying and chaos created with no discernible consequences. Not to mention a million plastic balls being dumped in various locations around California (actually Dublin, where it was filmed), without anybody freaking out and news bulletins aplenty. Yes, it speeds the story up, but parts of it don’t make a scrap of sense, and it feels a little over-edited. Large receptacles of salt are very much required.
The OM herself is helped by the efforts of a very game Chastain. Never afraid to commit, she does the smiley-demon stuff and the repressed matriarch well enough. She doesn’t quite get to the pitch-perfect levels of Alyssa Sutherland/Ellie from Evil Dead Rise in terms of unsettling freakiness (which seems to be the intention), but it is close. Nevertheless, she puts the grind in here and is obviously eager for genre shenanigans, emoting well in both roles. The OM starts out creepy AF and with nicely done CG FX to show that she still hasn’t perfected the human form. Later sequences, where she supposedly shows more of her true self, veer towards a Slenderman-type entity with burning red eyes, which does work well as it’s barely glimpsed. An excellent scene shows poor Bella adrift at sea and captured by an enormous hand from the depths. Classic. However, this makes it all the stranger that jump scenes are mostly flat, and it really isn’t scary for the most part, even with the set-up of a child being in mortal danger and a supernatural scumbag thwarting all attempts at stopping it.
Whilst Duplass and (especially) Olivia Clark are pretty good as the dad and daughter, there is an intriguing (and slightly depressing) undertone to the plot. The emphasis on Bella and her tormentor highlights the ways in which well-meaning parents can unintentionally harm their offspring just by… well, being who they are. Ursula is broadly (perhaps too broadly) written as a slightly cold and selfish mother, who doesn’t have Bella’s interests at heart. When blandly ‘celebrating’ their anniversary, the plainly upset daughter is displayed like a trophy to their ‘friends’, when she is smart enough to know that there’s trouble in the marriage. This is at odds with the disintegrating bodies and teleporting nasties. However, it does give some interesting perspective as to why a double-crossing demon might be able to entice a child to live a life ‘without pain’, although this is only treated in the most rudimentary manner. But there’s a frustrating lack of consistency and logic to the nature of OM. How come she can whisk Bella away to remote locations and appear to be all-powerful, but seemingly always drops her back somewhere where her parents can easily retrieve her? Why not ‘keep’ her somewhere where she can manipulate her emotions without interruptions? There is no lore or rules (or identity) that’s given to OM to make her a truly three-dimensional threat.
All of that is a problem. A lot of the details just don’t stick or make sense, and as a result, the threats are vague and poorly constructed, which drains much of the potential ‘horror’ in the narrative. Despite this, a big thumbs-up for the way in which the ‘professional paranormal researchers’ are depicted, which is most atypical. Also, kudos for bringing the excellent Karen Allen (“Raiders of the Lost Ark”) and Dichen Lachman (“Severance”) back to the genre, even if they are entirely wasted in their minimal roles. The ending looks like it’s going to be a fun romp (loving the weapon smorgasbord), but it quickly degenerates into a disappointingly mawkish affair… even with the unnecessary skin-peeling. And this is kind of what prevents it from becoming more fun, after some terrific imagery (hand prints covering a tunnel, Chastain’s face distorting, Russ literally fighting himself), it usually descends into inappropriate “life is pain, suck it up kid” dialogue. And don’t even get us started on the woefully timed confession that supposedly exorcises an entity towards the end. WTAF? At least Bella has the guts to go mano-a-mano and get her hands dirty.
And yet with all that (and the relatively low rating we’ve given it for obvious reasons), it really doesn’t deserve the bad headlines and absolute kicking that it seems to be suffering online. It’s not THAT bad, and nobody walked out of our screening (even if a few people did snigger at OM’s stretchy neck). For us, it just about creeps in as a bona fide ‘guilty pleasure’ and we found it entertaining at least. Chastain (and the rest of the cast) have nothing to be ashamed of here. It’s just a messy attempt at an atypical horror, with some great touches, but an uneven tone. It’s not a cinematic catastrophe and it’s certainly not going to lose Blumhouse vast sums of money. In fact, according to trade magazines, it’s already earned more in one day in the US than Digger has made in over a week, and there are far worse films out there. Get some perspective. We can’t exactly recommend it, but if you have the correct expectations and fancy a daft supernatural romp, you might just enjoy yourself. And like previous years, we aren’t spoilt for Halloween offerings again on the big screen… What is up with that?
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