‘Other Mommy’ Review: Is the Scariest Thing in the Closet a Familiar Face?

‘Other Mommy‘ lands in theaters on October 9 after being bumped from its original May date, carrying a premise that practically sells itself. Bela, an 8 year old girl living in a home strained by marital problems, discovers a sinister presence emerging from her closet that looks and sounds just like her mother. The thing calls itself “Other Mommy,” and it grows more threatening to the whole family as the story goes on.

Rob Savage, the director behind ‘Host’ and ‘The Boogeyman’, adapts Josh Malerman’s novel ‘Incidents Around the House’ from a script by Nathan Elston. Jessica Chastain plays both the real mother, Ursula, and the entity wearing her face, with Jay Duplass as Bela’s father, Arabella Olivia Clark as Bela, and Dichen Lachman, Arian Moayed and Karen Allen in supporting roles. The trailer that jolted audiences before ‘The Odyssey’ made this one of the more talked about horror titles of the season, and it clocks in at a lean 93 minutes.

That brisk runtime is part of the trouble, because the film spends its best idea early and then has very little left to build with. The opening stretch is the most effective thing here, and since so much of it has already been shown in marketing, the surprise has largely drained away before the lights go down. What follows feels like a movie waiting for its second act to arrive.

Savage has said the film packs in around 50 jump scares, and that number tells you everything about its philosophy. A few of them do land, but when the screen is jolting you every few minutes there is no room for dread to settle in and grow. Scares that arrive without any tension behind them start to feel like loud noises rather than fear, and I found myself bracing less and less as the film went on.

Chastain is the reason to stay in your seat. She commits to both halves of her dual role with complete seriousness, and she gives the film a spine that the material around her doesn’t always earn. It is a performance that deserves a sharper, stranger movie to live in.

The surrounding material is where things come apart. The entity’s mythology is thin and half formed, the marital tension that supposedly sets everything in motion never becomes real emotional stakes, and the structure lurches from one beat to the next. Some of the humor lands in the wrong spots, and the choices this family makes in the face of obvious danger invite groans more often than gasps. Beneath the surface it is a haunted child story we have seen many times, with very little here to make it feel new.

There are pleasures to be found, including a handful of striking visuals, a few jolts that genuinely work, and a lead actress who refuses to coast. I wanted to be frightened by this movie far more than I was, and I kept waiting for the dread to deepen into something that would stay with me after the credits. For a premise this strong and a star this committed, I give ‘Other Mommy’ 4 out of 10.

Did ‘Other Mommy’ scare you more than it did me, or did the jump scares wear thin for you too, so tell me in the comments whether you agree with my verdict.