Other Mommy Review: Ineffective Marital Horror

Jessica Chastain looks like she’s having fun playing a dual role in Other Mommy, but the movie is another run-of-the-mill horror thriller.

Like Spielberg, part of why I, and presumably others, keep coming back to this type of movie is that I want to understand who I am as an adult and why.

Seeing your parents argue at a young age is nothing special. After all, as the saying goes, all couples fight. But being forced to be involved in your parents’ separation as a result of a divorce is bound to taint not only your relationships with them, but with future partners or friendships of your own. That’s where Other Mommy tries to come in and use horror as an avenue to explore childhood trauma. It just falls flat on its face doing so.

Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark, of The Housemaid) spends her days with her Daddo at home while Mommy is out working. They have breakfast, play, and make up imaginary worlds together. Seemingly, she has a much closer relationship with Daddo than with Mommy. Amid all this, Bela can’t help but notice an unspoken tension between the parents. At night, after her parents tuck her into bed and assume she’s asleep, Bela summons what appears to be an imaginary friend, Other Mommy (also played by Chastain). Soon after, this figure reveals itself to be not a figment of Bela’s imagination, but a demon seeking to take over Bela’s body and experience being human.

I’ll get the good things out of the way first, because Other Mommy isn’t incompetently made. For starters, considering just how easy it would have been to tell this story from Chastain’s perspective, there is something genuinely admirable about the idea of placing the film’s focus on young actress Arabella Olivia Clark. Is she the brightest up-and-coming actress I’ve seen on screen? Not necessarily, but the script is mostly to blame, and, for what it’s worth, Clark sells the horror when needed.

An attempt is made to put you in the head of a kid who slowly watches her family fall apart and thinks it’s her fault. This is reflected in creative set pieces that see Bela jump between the real world and a house-of-mirrors version of reality, designed by both her and Other Mommy, to distract her from her parents’ marital drama. Another commendable aspect of the film is that the movie and the characters around Bela don’t treat her as either crazy or a liar.

Almost instantly, Daddo and Mommy believe her when things go wrong because they know she isn’t crazy or a liar, and they start experiencing the paranormal themselves. When the genre tends to dumb things down for the audience, this feels like a breath of fresh air. As for the parents, Chastain and Duplass share solid chemistry and have fun playing within horror conventions. Chastain, in particular, is a thrill to watch as she moves back and forth between her dual roles.

That’s as far as my compliments go for Other Mommy. The film had the right pieces to succeed: fun performances, good concept, an interesting approach. Unfortunately, it’s all buried under strange tonal choices that undermine any efforts to create an effective horror tale. The movie wants the family drama of Hereditary—though admittedly that might be too extreme a comparison—and the comedic effect of Drag Me to Hell. Separately, the themes those two explore can be electric, but together they’re rather jarring, as proven in Other Mommy.

An excellent example of its tonal identity crisis comes in the form of Uncle Frank (Arian Moayed, of Succession). Bela is assertive enough to tell his presence brings about trouble in her parents’ dynamic. As a child would react, she wants him gone, and Other Mommy steps in to handle the situation to prove its loyalty to Bela. What transpires is a goofy, VFX-heavy sequence that feels like the worst moments of the latest IT films, with ugly effects that are more distracting than spooky.

Creative creature designs on paper fall short of actually sending a chill down your spine and end up coming off as laughable. It doesn’t help that more than half the time, instead of being engaged, you spend your time thinking about the rules the movie sets up for its supernatural entity and how none of it makes sense. I believe this to be true about any film, but especially horror: the audience will forgive any plot holes as long as you can immerse them in the story you’re telling. Once again, Other Mommy fails at this.

The movie establishes that Other Mommy vanishes at the sight of strong light, yet is often seen in bright daylight without problem. For a creature seeking to possess Bela, it has no issue with endangering her physical well-being. But probably the worst offender of all is Other Mommy’s weaknesses. It’s explained to us that for Other Mommy to take over a child’s body successfully, the kid’s innocence must be intact. They can’t experience traumatic events, or else the mind and body will be spoiled.

As you read this, you can probably deduce what’s so wrong about this idea. How can such a creature ever expect to win when it spends the entire runtime terrorizing our characters, including Bela? Throughout its runtime, Bela witnesses people be killed in vicious ways that no child could come out with their innocence untouched. Yet, Other Mommy expects us to believe that her parents’ separation, and a secret about their past, is somehow as horrifying as a demon talking to a child in private.

Earlier in the review, I invoked Spielberg’s name to show that genre and heavy themes, like marital issues, can coexist. E.T.: The Extraterrestrial is a phenomenal film about finding companionship in others, even an alien, amidst fatherly abandonment. Catch Me If You Can retells how a clever con artist pulled off so many scams to impress his parents and get them back together. Hook follows a man at the brink of destroying his family because he prioritizes his job over his wife and children. Other Mommy’s attempt to tackle how divorce can ruin a child’s life through horror is not groundbreaking, but it is a fascinating idea. Unfortunately, it shoots itself in the foot way too quickly, turning any attempt at genuine horror into a laughable mess.

Other Mommy is now available to watch in U.S. theaters, in U.K. and Irish cinemas, and globally in theatres.