Rob Savage Reveals Just How Relentless the Jump Scares in ‘Other Mommy’ Really Are

Horror fans have spent much of 2026 swapping stories about trailers that made a packed theater jump out of its seats. Few have done it as effectively as the footage for ‘Other Mommy’, which debuted exclusively in front of screenings of Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’. Ever since, the chatter around its jump scares has only grown louder.

The film arrives just in time for the Halloween season. It opens in cinemas on October 9, 2026, with James Wan and Blumhouse Atomic Monster behind it and Rob Savage directing. Academy Award winner Jessica Chastain plays both Bela’s mother, Ursula, and the sinister entity known as Other Mommy, which gives the marketing a built-in hook.

Now Savage has put a number on just how often audiences should expect to flinch. The ‘Other Mommy’ director was asked how many jump scares he packed into the film, and he gave Entertainment Weekly a pretty ridiculous answer. “Oh, like 50,” he said, before adding that the exact count depends on how you define a jump scare.

He also used the moment to stand up for one of horror’s most criticized tools. Savage argued that a great jump scare doesn’t have to follow the familiar quiet, quiet, loud pattern. In his view, building a truly effective one is a craft of its own, whatever the genre’s skeptics think.

The math is where it gets fun. With a runtime of roughly 80 minutes, 50 scares works out to about one every 96 seconds, a calculation highlighted in the post from didyoucatchthistv. That’s a punishing pace, though Savage is clear the film isn’t a one-trick machine. He says it plays the hits of horror, mixing dread and bigger set pieces with a paranoia that leaves both Bela and the audience unsure whether they’re looking at her real mother or the entity.

That premise comes straight from the page. The film is based on Josh Malerman’s bestselling novel ‘Incidents Around the House’, and it follows eight-year-old Bela, whose already troubled family faces a terrifying new problem when an entity emerges from her closet. Savage has said the opening scene comes directly from the first page of Malerman’s novel.

Early reactions to the scare-heavy marketing have been anything but uniform. One viewer called the trailer’s opening jump scare a contender for the worst of all time, while another said their group couldn’t stop laughing at a Chastain moment. Others were far more convinced, and one Dread Central writer predicted it could be one of the biggest horror movies of the year after catching the trailer before ‘The Odyssey’.

Savage’s track record gives fans reason to be curious. The director is known for ‘Host’ and ‘The Boogeyman’, and he has built a reputation for inventive frights. Pairing that with a cast that also includes Dichen Lachman, Arian Moayed and Karen Allen suggests the film has more on its mind than just noise.

The studio is clearly betting that audiences are ready for it. Some critics have even framed ‘Other Mommy’ alongside ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Obsession’ as part of an unofficial trilogy of terror in 2026. If Savage’s count holds up, theatergoers might want to brace themselves, because the jump scares in ‘Other Mommy’ look set to keep coming right through opening weekend.