A young girl and her family are terrorized by an entity that wants the girl’s life in Rob Savage’s mostly flat and underbaked Other Mommy.
A good, or at least better, movie hides somewhere in Other Mommy. The 2026 horror film, directed by Rob Savage, has a few moments that work, but more than that, it comes off flat or downright silly, and the story of a young child and the tenacious relationship within her family pushed on by the monster that has latched onto her is lost in jarring editing and scripting decisions. I don’t find Other Mommy as bad as the headlines I’ve seen, but it’s not all that good either. The Nathan Elston-scripted film, based on Josh Malerman‘s novel Incidents Around the House, comes out… fine. There are worse films to spend 93 minutes with, but in a year with so many great horror films, there are certainly better.
Seven-year-old Bela has a special friend. Some nights, an entity she calls Other Mommy (and others do too, often for unintentional humor) shows up to play. The monster asks to be let into her heart, and has grown tired of asking. So it’s going to take more direct methods. When her stay-at-home Daddo (Real Mom, Ursula, works early and stays out late… ahem) encounters Other Mommy, it becomes a race to keep Bella away from the now-violent creature. In a nice touch, the family instantly realizes, “Okay, the Imaginary Friend is very real,” without any of the expected back-and-forth. There, the trio tries to get away, looking for help from family friends, other pit stops, Ursula’s mom, and her ghostbuster friends.
In the novel, Other Mommy looks a little different, with directly looking like mom being an occasional thing. But it’s a good choice to nearly always be Jessica Chastain’s Ursula, as it hints at the family’s dysfunction and the complex feelings Bela has about her mom, which she doesn’t quite understand because of her age. There’s something to be said for Bela not quite understanding the fraughtness in her family, the cracks the audience can see in her parents’ relationship and history. She knows something’s wrong, but she doesn’t have the maturity to see it directly; instead, it creeps into her belly for Other Mommy to use. Heck, there can be emotional abuse and unintended neglect coming to her, even from the onhand Daddo, played by Jay Duplass. It’s a film about the loss of innocence and facing the adult world early. At least, that’s what it’s obviously trying to say, albeit awkwardly.
In that way, Other Mommy is ultimately underdone. Like the creature itself trying to be human but not quite understanding it, no scene quite feels right, incomplete, or a script revision away from latching onto what it really wants to say, leaving the audience to fill in the blanks. This might come from how the film presents the story. In the novel, it’s all from Bela’s point of view, with a child’s-eye perspective. With the shift to a third-person, more neutral narrative camera view, the draw is lost, muting the outlook and the scares. The shift in perspective loses impact, forcing direct truths and clichés to replace inferences and misunderstandings .
With the scripting lacking, how is the frightening? It’s frustratingly repetitive. Every sequence plays out the same way, taking the bite out of the scares. Characters get settled; Bela is left alone for a moment (since her parents seem incapable of holding attention, kinda the point); the monster slides her into a Nightmare on Elm Street reality-bending sequence. Bela realizes, screams, tries to get away from the latest thing the mix of Coraline’s Other Mother (the Coraline notes are inevitable; not quite a copy but no doubt was bounding around Malerman’s brain) and Freddy Krueger dreams up as a facsimile of fun. Violence happens against someone, some weird CG effects occur, and it’s all so flatly directed that it barely registers. A few jump moments nearly work, but mostly fizzle, or just as often slide into the silliness. A handful of times, it seems like Savage is going for a camp outlook, but it’s so scattershot that I’m writing it off as unintentional.
The jarring editing cuts into and out of scenes too early and too late. We’re dropped from scene to scene with a “wait, that last one wasn’t done yet” and in the fight to get to 93 minutes, leaving important information out (why Bela is so attached to Other Mommy before she goes murder-monster is never established; but also appreciate no lore drops), pushing Big Moments to oddly felt offputting bits, such as a paranormal investigator suddenly makes a turn, and the rest of the sequence is a blur; the climactic “reveal” is so poorly dropped in awkwardly.
But Arabella Olivia Clark, who gets the introducing credit (despite bits Housemaid and Hand that Rocks the Cradle), is very good as Bella. She has a natural sense of character, grounded and unprecocious. Crimson Peak’s Jessica Chastain feels lost, unable to grasp either Mommy. Want to see her fight an otherworldly surrogate mom far better? Go back to the underappreciated Mama. Jay Duplass is better, but also seems to be trying to find his hook. But damn, do I love seeing Karen Allen from Raiders of the Lost Ark. She has only a few scenes, but she gives the film light in her brief appearance. She works the on-the-nose, what-it’s-all-about monologue with skill and grace.
Other Mommy is a flimsy film with a solid premise; it delivers its scares mostly blandly, though sometimes with a touch of silliness. The flat presentation and editing undermine its strengths and keep moments from breathing. A rather good new child performance beats the established actors, giving me a positive note to end on.