There is something inherently unsettling about the idea that the person you trust most in the world could be replaced by something altogether more sinister. It’s a simple but effective premise, one that has fuelled countless horror stories built around identity, parental protection and the terrifying uncertainty of childhood. In Other Mommy, director Rob Savage (Host, The Boogeyman) has all the ingredients for a genuinely disturbing supernatural nightmare, including an Academy Award-winning actress willing to contort herself into something almost unrecognisable. Unfortunately, despite the considerable thought and care that has clearly gone into its construction, the resulting film is an increasingly silly exercise in supernatural excess that never comes close to realising its potential.
Based on Josh Malerman‘s bestselling novel “Incidents Around the House”, Other Mommy centres on seven-year-old Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark), whose relatively ordinary family life is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious entity that bears an uncanny resemblance to her mother (Jessica Chastain). Initially presenting itself as something of a companion, the figure Bela comes to know as “Other Mommy” gradually reveals a more sinister agenda, forcing her parents, “Mommy” and “Daddo” (Jay Duplass), to confront a presence that seemingly refuses to leave their daughter alone.
With James Wan producing under the Blumhouse Atomic Monster banner, there’s certainly no shortage of horror pedigree involved, and Savage demonstrates an obvious enthusiasm for constructing elaborate sequences that play with perspective, physical space and the vulnerability of a child’s imagination. But while the technical ambition is evident, the storytelling rarely matches it. Other Mommy is a film that seems so preoccupied with how it can frighten an audience that it forgets to give them a compelling reason to be frightened in the first place.
Perhaps most frustratingly, the film’s most effective sequence is the one audiences have already been sold through its trailer. Serving as the opening, it’s a genuinely unnerving introduction that immediately establishes the peculiar physicality of its titular entity and the discomfort of something familiar behaving in an entirely unnatural manner. There’s a confidence to the way Savage initially introduces this threat, suggesting a film that understands the power of restraint and the fear generated by what we cannot fully comprehend. It’s an encouraging start, but one that ultimately sets a standard the remainder of the film struggles to match.
The problem isn’t necessarily that Other Mommy refuses to explain every aspect of its supernatural mythology. Horror often thrives on ambiguity, and the unknown can be infinitely more frightening than something neatly explained away. Rather, it’s that the film never makes its mythology feel particularly considered or worth investigating. The origins, motivations and possibilities surrounding Other Mommy remain frustratingly underdeveloped, and as the narrative progresses, the entity’s increasingly elaborate abilities begin to feel less like extensions of an established supernatural threat and more like convenient excuses for another visually ambitious set piece.
There are suggestions of something considerably more fascinating lurking beneath the surface, particularly in the possibility of another realm and the unsettling implications of an entity capable of exploiting a child’s emotional vulnerability. The idea of Other Mommy infiltrating Bela’s life by presenting herself as an idealised version of her actual mother is rich with psychological possibilities, especially when viewed against the family’s existing tensions. The film touches on the complications of motherhood, marital dissatisfaction and the painful realisation that parents are flawed individuals with lives and desires beyond their children, but these elements rarely develop into anything substantial enough to give the horror meaningful emotional weight.
Instead, the film increasingly favours spectacle over substance.
That’s particularly evident in a mid-film sequence involving family friend “Uncle Frank” (Arian Moayed), which delivers a surprisingly vicious burst of violence. It’s arguably the film’s most memorable moment beyond its opening, not because it reveals anything especially illuminating about the story or its characters, but because of the sheer brutality of its execution. Savage certainly knows how to stage an elaborate horror sequence, and the practical effects work deserves recognition, yet the moment feels symptomatic of the film’s larger shortcomings. It’s undeniably confronting, but its impact is largely superficial, a display of gory ingenuity that leaves little lasting impression once the immediate shock has passed.
From there, Other Mommy gradually descends into territory that feels disappointingly familiar. The introduction of paranormal scientist Lois Anthony (Dichen Lachman) and her attempts to confront the entity lead to an extended supernatural investigation that could have wandered in from any number of Insidious or The Conjuring instalments. There’s the requisite exploration of a haunted environment, increasingly frantic supernatural activity and an assortment of visual flourishes designed to suggest that the situation is escalating beyond anyone’s control. Yet for all the activity, remarkably little is actually clarified.
It’s an especially disappointing direction for a film that initially appears interested in exploring something stranger and more psychologically complex than the usual haunted-house formula. Rather than expanding our understanding of Other Mommy or making her presence more terrifying, these later sequences merely amplify the noise. The film becomes bigger, louder and more visually extravagant without becoming any more compelling. What should feel like an escalation of dread instead borders on the ridiculous, with the increasingly outlandish manifestations of the entity often proving more unintentionally amusing than genuinely frightening.
Through it all, Chastain deserves considerable credit for her commitment to the material. Playing both Bela’s mother and her supernatural imitation, she embraces the physical demands of the latter with an admirable lack of vanity. Her unnervingly fixed smile, exaggerated movements and almost insect-like contortions give Other Mommy a distinctive presence, particularly when the creature’s attempts at appearing human begin to deteriorate. There’s something undeniably effective about the way Chastain allows the slightest alteration in expression or posture to transform a familiar face into something profoundly uncomfortable.
It’s a performance that benefits enormously from the work of the film’s creature performers, prosthetics and visual effects teams, whose combined efforts create a figure capable of some genuinely disturbing physical transformations. But even Chastain’s considerable talents can only do so much with material that doesn’t offer her character enough depth beyond her unsettling appearance. Other Mommy is certainly memorable to look at, but she never becomes the iconic horror creation the film so clearly wants her to be. A creepy smile and a talent for bodily distortion can only sustain so much intrigue when the entity behind them remains so dramatically hollow.
It’s difficult to fault the craftsmanship on display though. Cinematographer Lowell A. Meyer makes effective use of perspective and confined spaces to emphasise Bela’s vulnerability, while the production design frequently transforms otherwise ordinary domestic environments into threatening spaces. There’s a tangible appreciation for the mechanics of horror filmmaking, and individual sequences demonstrate just how much effort has gone into creating the film’s distorted visual world. Unfortunately, technical accomplishment and effective storytelling are not interchangeable, and Other Mommy too often mistakes the former for the latter.
Even its closing moments, which gesture towards a degree of ambiguity, fail to generate much curiosity. An unresolved ending can be enormously effective when a film has established a mythology or emotional foundation worth contemplating, but here the uncertainty feels less like an invitation to consider what might happen next and more like another instance of the narrative withholding something it never properly developed. Rather than leaving audiences disturbed by the possibilities beyond the final frame, Other Mommy simply leaves them with little reason to care.
And that’s ultimately what makes the film such a disappointment. The notion of a malevolent maternal doppelgänger, potentially connected to an entirely different realm of existence, offers an abundance of possibilities for a horror film interested in the intersection of childhood fear, familial dysfunction and the supernatural. There’s a genuinely fascinating story somewhere within Other Mommy, one that could have used its central figure to explore the terrifying fragility of trust and the emotional consequences of discovering that the people who are supposed to protect us are not always who we believe them to be.
Savage has the visual imagination to make such a story disturbing, and Chastain has the ability to make its central monster unforgettable. What the film lacks is a screenplay willing to explore those possibilities with the same enthusiasm it devotes to its elaborate scares.
For all its carefully orchestrated chaos, gruesome spectacle and considerable technical ambition, Other Mommy is ultimately a horror film that looks far more frightening than it actually is. There’s plenty of movement, plenty of noise and no shortage of disturbing imagery, but precious little beneath it all. What begins with the promise of something genuinely nightmarish gradually deteriorates into a disappointingly conventional, occasionally laughable supernatural exercise.
Other Mommy might know how to make an entrance, but it has absolutely no idea what to do once it’s in the room.
TWO STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Other Mommy is now screening in Australian theatres, before opening in the United States on October 9th.
