In a time when horror seems to be at its most popular ebb, and new directors are crafting modern classics everywhere you look, it’s worth sparing a thought for the films that can’t quite measure up to that ever-escalating gold standard. One such example is Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, a film that’s seemingly taken its entire plot from stop-motion animated classic, Coraline, and that sees Jessica Chastain take a dual role to become the titular matriarch – but without the button eyes. But while the sound of Chastain playing the type of malevolent shape-shifter she once vanquished in the likes of It: Chapter 2 and Mama sounds like a mouthwatering prospect, Other Mommy instead seems to be something else. Merging an overabundance of jump-scares with some entry level use of themes, there’s a feeling that this tale of a murderous mommy mimic is stuck feeling wanting while it’s peers are breaking boundaries. Simply put, Other Mommy could use something of a time out…
They say that no matter how hard you try, you can’t keep all the bad stuff from your kids. Take Isabela Martin for example; already struggling to accept the fact that she has to start a new school and leave all of her old friends behind, she’s noticing that her no-nonsese, businesswoman mother, Ursula, and househusband father, Russell, have been steadily growing apart. But in an attempt to feel better about her reconfiguring world, Bella has made something of a strange new friend in the shape of an entity she calls Other Mommy, but while most little girls would simply have an imaginary friend, it turns out that this ethereal, shape changing creature is very real.
Grooming Bella to a point where she’ll let this smooth-talking thing “into her heart”, Other Mommy’s attempts to woo her get incredibly brazen right from the start, with an early attempt to convince its target, revealing its existence to the parents. However, while you might feel that this is an incredibly clumsy move for a being that deals in manipulating reality and supernatural subterfuge, it’s aided by the fact that this family has absolutely no idea how to deal with such a danger, or even who to call.
It soon becomes apparent that Other Mommy can find Bella no matter where her parents flee to, and in order to sweeten the deal, it offers to remove the things from her life that’s causing her distress – like the man her mother is having an affair with. However, it seems that despite having to stare the supernatural in the face, it Ursula and Russell do actually have an avenue to explore in the form of Ursula’s estranged mother, who has some experience with those who have had dealings with the supernatural. Can this beleaguered family possibly hope to stand against a trickster entity that can mold itself into any form?
In Other Mommy’s defence, it truly seems that Rob Savage (formally of Host, Dashcam and The Boogeyman) is genuinely trying to mix up the narrative flow that you tend to get with these kinds of movies. Usually, these types of stories spend as much of the movie as it can holding back on the central creature revealing itself to anyone other than its child target – or anyone it decides to kill – until the final act, when members of the family ultimately unify to give the creature a damn good vanquishing. However, in an attempt to mix things up, Savage has opted to make a film where a creature built for stealth seems to want to show itself to literally everyone it can in order to deliver as many, cheap jump-scares as possible. It’s a ballsy play, and would require something of a incredibly tight script to pull off, but unfortunately, due to some rather lax storytelling, Other Mommy feels suspiciously like one of those malformed movies that was filmed from the first draft of a script.
You’d think that exposing the eponymous creature to the entire cast would speed things up as we forgo such standard plot threads like the parents wondering if their child needs therapy due to their insistence that their imaginary friend has gone loco, but instead, the fact that everyone, even people who haven’t seen the thing, seemingly buys into the notion of the supernatural instantly just feels a little bit silly. That’s not to say there isn’t some good things to glean from this film, it’s just that this is all stuff we’ve seen before and done far better. After facing off against a few shape-shifters in her time, you can tell Chastain has gone all-in when it comes to portraying a reality-warping spirit as she brings every inch of that striking bone structure to bear. Fixing us with repeated dead stares twined with eerie smiles and multiple CGI embellishments, Other Mommy certainly is trying to give Pennywise a run for his money when it comes to form shifting size, face, form and even gravity in order to convince little Bella to give it what it wants. At one point, it even disguises itself as a toilet as Chastain’s head cranes in on a braciosaur neck; but often, the computer geeks can’t quite match the films vision, or Chastain’s haunting smile.
However, it all soon falls apart as the film quickly realises that it’s written itself into a corner by skipping some of the story sections in the script. With the family knowing full well that Other Mommy is real within the first fifteen minutes, all the film has left for them to do us flee from setpiece to setpiece that takes in a teleporting ordeal involving a ball pit, and an impromptu seance that predictably goes Pete Tong not long after it starts. The thing is, while Savage is obviously having fun cramming his lead actress in weird positions and corners in order to score a good fright, Blumhouse/Atomic Monster has actually covered this kind of material before with equal disappointment with the likes of Imaginary back in 2024.
While the film gets good milage from turning Jessica Chastain’s body to the consistency of freakish play-dough, and the actress is clearly having a ball in her dual roles, Other Mommy just doesn’t have really anything to say for itself other than innocence is fleeting and a lot of sudden BOO’s. Where other, more noticable horror releases this year have balanced their scares and metaphors far more intelligently, this film can’t even claim to have the most memorable, recent, shape-shifter, as last year’s It spinoff, Welcome To Derry, beats it to the surrealistic punch every time. It’s the latest film to discover that a lot of the older ways just don’t work the way they used to, not when you have the likes of Zach Cregger, Curry Barker and various other up and comers literally reinventing the genre as they go.
It’s fun in something of a basic way and the film gets a hefty amount of milage from it’s titular spirit. But even the sight of Chastain using her distinctive features to pull the creepiest expressions of her career can’t save Other Mommy from calling uncle.
Coraline’s lawyers are on line 2…
🌟🌟
Where to watch Other Mommy: