Other Mommy ~ Review

By: [email protected] on
There’s a whole horror subgenre where supernatural creatures menace children. These movies are designed to instantly get the audience invested because 1) no one wants to see a child harmed, and 2) it puts us in the mindset of a kid remembering our nightmares. The best example is Poltergeist, which explores the cultural anxiety of the 80s through a young girl terrified by a…poltergeist. Other Mommy owes a lot to Poltergeist, such as how the film treats its parental characters, and it even includes an eccentric ghost hunter in the second act. The novel element Other Mommy brings to the table is that the film is firmly centered on the child, which somehow makes it more terrifying. However, where Other Mommy runs into trouble is in the nature of its supernatural horror. How powerful the creature is at any given time, and what rules govern it, are maddeningly opaque. The following will contain minor spoilers.
Seven-year-old Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark) lives with her seemingly happy parents – workaholic Ursula (Jessica Chastain) and stay-at-home dad Russ (Jay Duplass). There’s clearly marital tension that Bela’s parents keep hidden from her, especially whatever is going on between Ursula and Russ’ best friend Frank (Arian Moayed). Bela is starting to pick up on this tension, though, with the help of the shapeshifting supernatural entity Bela dubs “Other Mommy” (also Chastain). However, when Bela and Russ are attacked by this entity in broad daylight, it becomes clear that Other Mommy is more than an imaginary friend. So the movie is off to the races with director Rob Savage staging one surreal, nightmarish set piece after another. Chastain’s Other Mommy sprouts multiple limbs, grows in size, teleports Bela to the ocean, and creates an infinite labyrinth in an indoor play structure.
All of the scare sequences are fairly creepy, even though they rely a little too much on jump scares for my taste, but at a certain point the film becomes repetitive. The family leaves their house because they believe Other Mommy is tied to it, only for them to be attacked in other locations. They head to Ursula’s estranged mother (Karen Allen) because she knows a ghost hunter (Dichen Lachman). But Other Mommy attacks them there too. Furthermore, Other Mommy is so powerful that I started to wonder why it can’t just get what it wants by force of will alone. The film also can’t quite decide what tone it wants to be, elevated horror about repressed emotions, or something more campy and silly.
The cast is good across the board. Jessica Chastain is clearly having fun chewing the scenery as the demonic Other Mommy, and plays Ursula as a mom just trying to keep it all together. Jay Duplass channels Craig T. Nelson in Poltergeist with his everyday stoner dad attitude. Karen Allen is briefly in the movie, but very good as a hippy dippy grandma. The real standout is Arabella Olivia Clark, who has to carry the whole movie on her shoulders. The actress pulls it off with aplomb. Playing terrified, willful, and normal seven-year-old sometimes all at once. I expect that we’ll be seeing more of her as the years go on.
Other Mommy is a mixed bag. Fun (if a bit repetitive scares), engaging performance, but with a tonal inconsistency at its core. You could watch worse horror movies this spooky season.
Two Stars out of Four