Courtney Howard // Film Critic
OTHER MOMMY
Rated R, 1 hour and 32 minutes
Directed by: Rob Savage
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Arabella Olivia Clark, Jay Duplass, Karen Allen, Dichen Lachman, Arian Moayed, Sean Kaufman
If you’ve seen the teaser trailer for Rob Savage’s OTHER MOMMY then you’ve basically seen the best part of this movie, all of which takes place during its cold open. Adapted from Josh Malerman’s book Incidents Around The House, the horror-chiller is centered on an adolescent girl plagued by a malevolent entity whose escalating requests to be accepted puts everyone in danger. While the book had good bone structure and an intriguing POV, it left a lot of room for cinematic improvements to be made. Unfortunately, the book-to-screen translation fails to properly land since the filmmakers forgot to put care into the scares.
Bela Martin (Arabella Olivia Clark) should be living her best life as a 7-year-old. Her parents – working mom Ursula/ Mommy (Jessica Chastain) and stay-at-home dad Russell/ Daddo (Jay Duplass) – both love her unconditionally, despite their differences with each other. She’s smart and enjoys schoolwork. We also glean that her folks are financial stable since they live in a large home and can afford a babysitter (Sean Kaufman) to watch their kid while they host a lavish anniversary party in their own home. However, Bela’s got a big secret: she has an imaginary friend she calls “Other Mommy,” a shifty demon who takes the physical form of her real mom, except more playful, magical and always on call to listen to Bela.
All hell breaks loose once Other Mommy’s continued, aggressive requests to be let into Bela’s heart begins to wear on our pint-sized protagonist. The wicked entity manifests first to Daddo, contorting and creeping underneath the family’s kitchen table, and then to Ursula, who witnesses her deceptive look-a-like grabbing her daughter in her bedroom. As the parents are unsure if this demonic presence is exclusively tied to their home, they seek sanctuary at their family friend Frank’s (Arian Moayed) house and later at Ursula’s semi-estranged, spiritualist mother Ruth’s (Karen Allen). But it soon becomes clear that the only way to defeat their problem is together as a family.
in Other Mommy. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
For as much visual dexterity Savage executes during the big action set pieces showcasing Other Mommy’s dastardly deeds (like the Play Place ball pit, botched séance and anniversary party visitation sequences), for the most part, adapting writer Nathan Elston leaves characters drastically underdeveloped. To be fair, Malerman’s book also suffered from similar problems. Elston nips and tucks certain scenarios, for better, truncating the books repetitive story beats, and worse, combining the underhanded ghost hunter with the kindly medium which results in a poorly redesigned Lois (Dichen Lachman). The finale diverges greatly from the book’s far bleaker ending. In this iteration, we’re dealt a rote, unsatisfactory conclusion that doesn’t actually wrap up anything we saw previously.
Ursula and Russell/ Daddo are barely two-dimensional figures – even through the eyes of their young daughter, who probably don’t know her parents yet as fleshed out people. To the audience, they ache for smarter character construction. Though Elston does put a finer point on Ursula’s affair with Frank, it comes at the cost of clunky, heavy foreshadowing, of which the film is riddled with, from Daddo telling Bela, “You don’t have to be related to be family,” to the entirety of Ruth’s fireside chat with Bela. Russell/ Daddo is treated as set dressing in Bela’s purview. Sure, he has lines and the pair share a tender bond, but he’s never stands out as an individual. He’s too simplistically drawn.
Ursula comes across horribly time and time over by the filmmakers (and author). She’s punished for being a working mom, let alone a selfish cheater who psychologically and physically manifests as the face of her daughter’s tormentor. Paging, Dr. Freud! She also gives a late confession to Bela that only serves to solidify her appearance as an archetypal “bad mom.” The connection between the traumatic mother-daughter disconnect should be greater furthered through Ursula’s own fissured relationship with Ruth, but it’s glaringly not acknowledged. The sentiment that women can’t outrun familial trauma doesn’t resonate as loudly as it should, even at its most subtle. That’s not without Chastain’s attempts to soften her character’s sharper, blunt edges goes unnoticed. Still, her uncanny, uncomfortable smile only disarms for so long.
Perhaps the biggest oversight is that Bela’s burdensome predicament rarely feels visceral, or weighty, as it does in the book. Since this story is told from the perspective of a 7-year-old, we should absolutely be empathizing with a compelling sense of fear, dread and anxiety over the events that are frightening our harried heroine – and yet we don’t. That’s not to blame Clark’s performance. The material undermines her work. She has the tough task of carrying almost the entire film on her small shoulders. Yet her character-driven scenes don’t function to their greatest advantages due to the uncreative minds motoring the horrific hijinks.
VFX work is akin to IT and IT CHAPTER 2. At one point, Other Mommy’s regular form distorts into a lanky creature, who best resembles the painted woman Stanley was afraid of. Frank’s gruesome death is indeed grotesque, but looks like Pennywise’s mouth. She later briefly shape-shifts into a multi-limbed, multi-ambidextrous monstrosity. The film’s score helps conjure an atmospheric pull with discordant, distorted music cues. Sound design helps to differentiate Bela’s interactions with the malignant spirit versus humans. The house being in disarray once the messy Martin family return home to face their demons is a smart metaphor.
OTHER MOMMY is comparative to DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, another rated-R horror film told from the perspective of a young heroine. That one too didn’t live up to high expectations or potential scare factor. Children inhabit a world full of petrifying things, from being in unstable environments to encountering real evil people. It’s a shame the orchestrated shenanigans didn’t give voice to kids’ genuine, haunting fears.
Grade: 2 out of 5
OTHER MOMMY is in theaters on October 9.
