Other Mommy Review: Rob Savage’s Horror Film Disappoints

Some creepy moments but quite a messy film.

Director: Rob Savage
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Arabella Olivia Clark, Jay Duplass, Dichen Lachman, Karen Allen

Good Points

• Jessica Chastain is excellent.

• Arabella Olivia Clark gives a good performance too.

• Some genuinely creepy moments.

• Some decent visuals.

Bad Points

• Too many jump scare attempts.

• The story gets messy.

• Lacks the impact it seems to be aiming for.

Other Mommy Plot

Based on Josh Malerman’s novel Incidents Around the House—Bela encounters a strange presence that looks just like her mother. What starts as an unsettling presence in the house soon becomes a much bigger problem for the family.

My Thoughts on Other Mommy

Jessica Chastain Is Great

I’ll start with the best thing about Other Mommy, and that is Jessica Chastain, who plays both the real mother and Other Mommy. Her performance and the difference between the two versions was easily a standout amongst everything else going on, even though I wished the story around her was a bit better, she deserved better here.

Arabella Olivia Clark is also good as Bela, and the film did have some decent moments involving the family, but it didn’t really have the impact on me I think the film was looking for.

I haven’t read the book either, but apparently in the book the entity is actually invisible to the parents, and Josh Malerman’s novel also relied more on psychological horror, rather than what this film relied on.

I think I would have preferred more how the book did the horror aspects from the sounds of it on the whole.

Some Decent Horror Elements

Rob Savage has made some good horror before, in particular Host, and here you get some pretty creepy moments sometimes that worked decently enough - the kitchen table scene is a good example, and the jungle gym sequence too was good.

The problem though is that the film seems to think it needs to keep throwing scares at you rather than letting the creepy stuff do its job. Apparently, the film contains around 50 jump scares, and you can really feel that approach after a while.

I certainly don’t mind a jump scare when they’re done well - even cheap ones now and then can work fine - but when they keep coming, and coming, it really takes you out of the film and feels a bit too cheap and easy. You end up just waiting and expecting rather than feeling surprised when something does happen.

The Story Gets a Bit Messy

The other problem I had is that I wasn’t completely sold on where the story goes. The core idea of something pretending to be a child’s mother is pretty creepy, and it’s something you could do a lot with without needing to keep adding more things into the mix, but Other Mommy decided it wanted to start throwing in extra ideas that just wasn’t needed.

At one point the film pivots to Bela’s grandmother’s castle/house, which felt like the film was heading off in another direction completely, without actually developing what was already there.

With that said, I personally wouldn’t call Other Mommy a really bad film, even with its rotten Rotten Tomatoes score (See what I did?) I thought there were some decent moments and visuals, and Chastain is worth watching, but I did end up a quite disappointed too.

Final Verdict

A decent horror film idea that wasn’t handled as well as I was hoping - too many jump scare attempts and a messy story stopped it from being as good as it could have been.

It’s maybe worth a look when it comes to streaming though for a popcorn type jump scare fest film, but it could have been more.

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