At its core, Other Mommy is a bedtime lullaby gone haywire. Marketing and trailers try to insinuate otherwise by packing in jump scares and loud musical stings. There’s a disconnect between Universal’s hopes of scoring big October box office numbers and the softhearted, sparkle-dusted, sorta-scary tale Rob Savage musters. It’s comparable to Andy Muschietti’s Mama or Mike Flanagan’s Before I Wake, rooted in family turmoil through a child’s warped perspective. That’s not a pass for the janky tonal shifts between horror and whimsy, lacking dread, or an overall head-scratcher narrative—Other Mommy swings big and rarely connects. But perhaps audiences would be more forgiving without pre-screening preconceptions about the movie it never was.
Adorable daughter Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark) has the perfect life. “Daddo” Russell (Jay Duplass) plays stay-at-home pops, cooking breakfast and napping next to his painted tabletop miniatures. “Mommy” Ursula (Jessica Chastain) is your absent workaholic go-getter, constantly late and always making excuses. Then there’s “Other Mommy” (also Chastain), who Bela hides in her bedroom. Other Mommy’s there to be the parent Ursula isn’t—really a trickster demon trying to inhabit Bela’s teenie body. But Bela doesn’t know any better, even after Other Mommy makes her presence known and sends the family on an escape journey from their live-in monster.
Savage’s adaptation of Josh Malerman’s “Incidents Around the House” is wholesomely intended. Bela’s little miss sunshine routine represents childhood innocence, even though she can see the cracks in her surroundings. Daddo and Mommy aren’t in the stablest marriage, despite their crowded 7th wedding anniversary party. Other Mommy sees her chance to convince Bela she can protect her from harm (by swapping places), which becomes a tender throughline about how life is messy and painful, but that’s why it’s beautiful. Clark’s adolescent performance is organic in its curiosity and sadness; a pipsqueak who can’t qualify how layered our existences are, so she retreats to the safety of sugarplum happiness.
However, Other Mommy struggles to sustain cohesive tension. Savage bounces between all-out creature attacks, ghost-hunting follies, Chicken Soup for the Cursed Soul, and other hybrid genres. When Chastain’s maleficent mother-thing should torture us, her shapeshifting form makes us laugh. When Daddo and Mommy fall into relationship pitfalls, their dustups don’t bottom out as they should. As Savage tries to solidify his film’s identity, he pulls from a grab-bag of nightmare situations that lack connective tissue—and yet it’s all familiar. Unfortunately, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil beat Other Mommy to the multi-limbed visual punch, or how Kane Parsons’ Backrooms did the whole elongated, slendery, shambling-creature schtick, because boy, do certain shots feel one-for-one.
That said, what hits definitely hits. Other Mommy might bleed Goldschlager, but humans gush crimson blood, because out of nowhere, Savage hits us with one of the goriest deaths of 2026. The digital clayface effects on Chastain aren’t anything to praise, and her giant-sized version isn’t even worth a meme—yet, when emerging from the right shadows, Other Mommy inspires an adrenalized fright. Questions of Other Mommy’s ability to frazzle reality are valid—letting Bela dance on a ceiling covered with balloons, pulling her through a ball pit wormhole—and still, Savage’s imagery can hold strong. Then there’s the whole séance attack sequence at Grandma Ruth’s (Karen Allen), as bafflingly inserted as it is attractive under a blacklight; a commentary on fakers and frauds facing pure, in-the-flesh evil.
But Other Mommy is an adaptation trapped in limbo. A kid-centric horror flick that’s too mature for underage audiences, yet won’t resonate as strongly with adults. It’s not Duplass’ fault; he serviceably plays a compassionate, goofball dad who loves the heck out of his child. It’s not Chastain’s fault either, tasked with underserved drama for Ursula and an alien performance as Other Mommy, an underworld mimic who’s supposed to be overly eager and exaggerate what we perceive as normal traits. What fails is this higher-concept haunting that can’t stop reinventing itself, and how Savage ultimately loses control of pacing, momentum, and tone in the process.
Other Mommy isn’t as godawful as Dashcam (what is?), but doesn’t sniff Savage’s far-better feel-good(ish) horror tale, The Boogeyman. All that shimmers isn’t gold, I’m afraid. A touching, at times thrilling, watch burns in there somewhere that Savage can’t set free. What amounts to an assortment of freakish Jessica Chastain transformations and not-terrifying-enough chills will keep audiences guessing in all the wrong ways. Hooray for what works, but it’s not enough to save this unfocused and out-of-sorts take on finding the beauty in life we discredit daily.
Movie Score: 2.5/5