THE STORY – Bela, an eight-year-old girl living in a home with marital problems, confronts a sinister entity that comes out of her closet. The presence, whom she calls “Other Mommy,” becomes increasingly threatening to her and her family.
THE CAST – Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass, Arabella Olivia Clark, Dichen Lachman, Karen Allen, Arian Moayed & Rosie Anne O’Gorman
THE TEAM – Rob Savage (Director) & Nathan Elston (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 93 Minutes
Films have used whole scenes as trailers for decades, but Rob Savage’s “Other Mommy” may be the first to keep the title card treatment intact from film to trailer. After the creepiest what-the-fuck image of Jessica Chastain contorted into a ball under a counter, we flash to the title with a wobbly bass throb: “O”. Then back to Jay Duplass falling backward through a sliding glass door. “T”. Cut back to young star Arabella Olivia Clark screaming her little head off. “H”. And so on. What works as a hype moment in a trailer doesn’t necessarily work in a film, though, and this is only the first instance of Savage mistaking something that looks cool for something that actually works onscreen. “Other Mommy” is overflowing with cool, clever visual flourishes meant to goose up its tiresome jump scares. Still, they can’t hide how barely functional this screenplay is (based on Josh Malerman’s novel “Incidents Around the House,” who also wrote “Bird Box”). Thankfully, Oscar winner Chastain is on hand to deliver the kind of wildly overqualified horror-villain performance that basically guarantees a good time for the audience. If only the rest of the film were up to her level.
Russ (Duplass), Ursula (Chastain), and Isabela (Clark) look like a perfect family at first glance: successful, fun-loving, comfortable. Look closer, though, and you can see that things aren’t quite right. Mommy and “Daddo” are clearly going through a bit of a rough patch, but they do their best to put on happy faces for Bela. Their daughter has noticed, though, and she isn’t the only one: A demon has latched onto Bela, taking the form of her mother and asking her to go inside her heart so that she can “protect it.” Bela is wary of the entity she calls “Other Mommy,” but when her parents see the demon for themselves, Bela becomes as scared of them as she is of Other Mommy. When their already frayed relationship gets put through the wringer, will Ursula and Russ find a way to protect their daughter’s heart for real?
Malerman’s novel told the story from Bela’s point of view, and screenwriter Nathan Elston does the same. Unfortunately, this creates a tonal disconnect: the film’s action is hard-R, gory, and intense, but the character and thematic beats are plainly stated in simple language appropriate for children. Good on them for not treating Bela like a tiny adult, but this approach makes “Other Mommy” feel more like a PG-13 film in an R-rated package. Everything about the film’s story feels designed for younger audiences, but the hyperviolent bursts of gore happening every few scenes are actively un-kid-friendly. On top of that, Russ and Ursula’s marital strife, the driving force behind Bela’s attachment to Other Mommy, is only obliquely referenced for most of the film before a last-act trauma-dump monologue that packs a lot of storytelling into a vanishingly short time. The film’s on-the-nose thematic message delivery feels geared toward younger audiences, partly because it uses Bela as the main POV character. The film is self-aware enough to throw in a slyly comic edit or backhanded joke every once in a while, but it takes its thematic content seriously, an admirable choice that nonetheless feels wrong. The film didn’t have to lean fully into camp or horror-comedy to succeed, but it feels stranded in a tonal no-man’s-land between PG-13 and R-rated audiences: too intense in moments for younger audiences, too simplistic for older ones.
Despite all that, though, Chastain rises above. In her dual role as Ursula and Other Mommy, the film fits into the long, proud lineage of so-called “hagsploitation”: scary movies built around an older actress fully committing to a ridiculous part to entertain her public. Chastain may seem too young for this, but it’s worth noting that, at 49, she’s only about five years younger than Bette Davis was when she starred alongside Joan Crawford in the hagsploitation classic “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”. The Oscar winner conducts herself exactly as Davis, Crawford, Olivia de Havilland, Shelley Winters, and others did in their latter-day horror projects, never once condescending to the material or the audience. Her classical training shines through in how she differentiates between Ursula and Other Mommy, adopting uncannily stiff, nearly alien body language and overly crisp vocal work as the demon that’s instantly unsettling. The sound team helps with her otherworldly presence, adding a slight echo whenever Other Mommy takes over. While the visual effects and makeup teams clearly had fun designing her most demonic forms, resulting in some nicely creepy imagery, Chastain’s rictus grin and blank stare are their own kind of special effect, a twisted maternal version of the demon in “Smile”.
Would that Savage had an ounce of that film’s bravery to be genuinely upsetting. Instead, he slathers “Other Mommy” with flashy editing transitions meant to heighten the film’s supernatural surreality. They’re effective on a base level, but they also feel like a last-ditch effort to cover up the film’s bland screenplay with some visual interest. Chastain does that all on her own, creating an iconic horror villain with just her face. She saves “Other Mommy” from the depths of unwatchability, as great actresses have done since the dawn of cinema. Still, the audience would have an even better time if she had a script that actually built something solid around her. Younger audiences sneaking in or watching at a slumber party may jump here or there, but audiences who have seen their fair share of horror movies won’t be inviting “Other Mommy” into their hearts any time soon.
