‘Other Mommy’ movie review: Jessica Chastain and Arabella Olivia Clark deliver creepy chills

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It is October and time for scary movies to hit the cinemas. Rob Savage’s Other Mommy , based on Josh Malerman’s 2024 novel, Incidents Around the House , is a serviceable little horror film with just that touch of guilt and psychological underpinnings to make for a layered experience rather than a simple slice-and-dice affair. Malerman, incidentally, made his writing debut with the post-apocalyptic horror novel, Bird Box in 2014.

Produced by James Wan, Other Mommy tells the story of seven-year-old Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark) who lives with her working mum Ursula (Jessica Chastain) and stay-at-home dad, Russell (Jay Duplass).

After her parents put her to bed, Bela whispers for Other Mommy (also Chastain) to come out to play. And we realise that there is an entity that might not be wishing the little girl well.

The parents and others see Other Mommy early in the film, and thus the opportunity to wonder if the entity is a creation of Bela’s imagination is lost. The film hits the ground running and though it meanders in the second half, moving from the sketchy man’s house to a restaurant and then to a séance at Grandmama’s, and has an incredibly low body count for a horror film, there is a lot of fun to be had in the performances and physical effects.

Chastain is watchable as always as the guilt-ridden Ursula and the entity, Other Mommy, with her manic smile and terrible tears. Clark looks sweet and thoughtful while proving to be a confident performer. It is always nice to watch Karen Allen, who plays Grandma Ruth, looking for all the world as though she might dash off to Tanis and the Well of Souls with Indy at any moment.

The physical effects, including the 65,000 coloured balls for the play-pit sequence, and the meticulously created props in the upside-down room, do a number on one’s sense of perspective. The upside-down room is slightly bigger than the original, uses a drapes master for the curtains to fall ‘up’ naturally and plastic prop glasses of champagne. Other Mommy on stilts towering over Bela, contributes to the feeling of everything not quite in its right place.

The not-so subliminal message of Ursula being punished for having an affair and not being home for her little girl and how demonic entities target innocents and scarper when children lose their “purity” is troubling but maybe sometimes a movie is just a movie and not a mirror to all that is wrong with the world.

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