Other Mommy Review: A Strong Start That Quickly Falls Apart
For about five minutes, Other Mommy had me. The opening is genuinely captivating, with a setup that immediately makes you interested in where this story could go. Then the title card appears, and almost everything that follows struggles to live up to it. There are some decent performances and good technical work here, but I walked out confused and pretty unsatisfied. More than anything, this felt like a film that just did not know what it wanted to be.
Directed by Rob Savage, with a screenplay by Nathan Elston adapted from Josh Malerman’s novel Incidents Around the House, the film follows a young girl named Bela, played by Arabella Olivia Clark. Bela has formed a relationship with a sinister entity she calls “Other Mommy,” which takes on the appearance of her actual mother, played by Jessica Chastain. That relationship becomes increasingly threatening as the entity begins terrorizing the family.
That is a pretty straightforward horror concept, and conceptually, there is plenty to work with. Something dangerous taking the form of someone a child should be able to trust is unsettling on its own. The opening gives you a glimpse of how effective that idea could be. Unfortunately, rather than building on that foundation, the film starts making a relatively simple story feel unnecessarily complicated.
The biggest issue is the writing. I could follow the basic situation, but I struggled to understand what the film was trying to do with it. There is a difference between leaving things mysterious and leaving the audience confused, and for me, Other Mommy kept falling into the second category. I never felt I had a satisfying understanding of what this entity actually was, and the further the story went, the less invested I became in finding out.
The constant changes in tone do not help. One minute, it wants to be a horror film. Then it wants to be a family drama, then a comedy, before switching straight back to horror. At times, the cheesiness almost makes it feel like a kids’ movie, which clashes with how frightening it is clearly trying to be elsewhere. Mixing genres is not automatically a problem, but here, those different elements never really come together. It feels like the film keeps changing its mind rather than knowing how to balance them.
Then there are the jump scares. There are so many that it starts to feel like the film is reaching for another one every couple of minutes. That might work for some viewers, but it got old for me. Instead of becoming more frightened as things escalated, I became increasingly aware of how often the film was trying to get a reaction. There is only so much a sudden scare can do when I am not particularly invested in what is happening around it.
“There is only so much credit you can give the cinematography, lighting and editing when the story itself has no clear sense of direction.”
Jessica Chastain is easily one of the stronger elements. Playing both Bela’s mother and the entity that resembles her, she has plenty to commit to, and she absolutely does. Whatever my issues with the film, her effort is not one of them. She gives this performance everything, even when the material does not feel worthy of that level of commitment. I might not have connected with the story, but I could still appreciate how fully she throws herself into it.
Arabella Olivia Clark is also good as Bela, particularly for such a young performer. Neither she nor Chastain was the reason this did not work for me. There are capable performances here. The problem is that those performances are sitting inside a story that never gave me enough reason to care about the characters.
On a technical level, the film is much better than its screenplay. The cinematography and lighting are good, and there are interesting elements to the visual style, even if I would not call it anything particularly remarkable. Savage’s direction is fine, but nothing about it stood out enough to overcome my frustrations with the material.
The editing and pacing also deserve credit. I did not think the film’s problem was that it moved too slowly or struggled to keep things moving. The pacing works. It is the story being delivered at that pace that does not. A film can move along perfectly well and still leave you wondering what all of it is adding up to.
The music and sound did not particularly register with me. I would not call them bad, but they were not elements I came away thinking about, either. What ultimately held the film back most was that lack of emotional investment. I did not really care about the characters, which made it difficult to care about what might happen to them. I also struggled to find a clear idea or message underneath the scares. Not every horror film needs to make some profound statement, but when the story is this muddled, it needs something else to hold onto. For me, it often felt like it was trying to be scary simply for the sake of being scary.
Without getting into spoilers, the ending gave me similar vibes to It Chapter Two. That was the closest comparison that came to mind, but it did not make the conclusion any more satisfying. Other Mommy is frustrating because the concept has so much going for it. There is a genuinely strong opening, Chastain gives it her all, and the cinematography, lighting, editing and pacing are all worth acknowledging. But none of those things can fix a story that feels this unsure of itself.
Dedicated horror fans who are happy to turn up for a string of jump scares might get more out of it than I did. Personally, this is not something I would recommend making a trip to the cinema for. I would wait to watch it at home. With stronger writing and a clearer sense of direction, it could have been far better. As it stands, those first five minutes remain the best part.
