Verdict: 2.5/5 — Jessica Chastain is terrific twice over, but Blumhouse’s doppelganger horror is scares without a soul
Other Mommy is the Halloween-season paradox of 2026: a horror film audiences rejected with a rare D+ CinemaScore that still opened at number one with $27.5 million. The film’s entire case for existing is Jessica Chastain playing both a struggling mother and the demon wearing her face — and she is, as ever, magnificent. The movie around her, unfortunately, is a factory-assembled jump-scare delivery system with almost nothing on its mind. Our rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.
| Movie | Other Mommy (2026) |
|---|---|
| Release date | October 9, 2026 (US, Universal Pictures) |
| Director | Rob Savage |
| Cast | Jessica Chastain, Arabella Olivia Clark, Jay Duplass, Dichen Lachman, Arian Moayed, Karen Allen |
| Based on | Incidents Around the House, the 2024 novel by Josh Malerman |
| Producers | Jason Blum and James Wan (Blumhouse / Atomic Monster) |
| Runtime | 1 hour 33 minutes |
| Our rating | 2.5/5 |
The premise: the scariest thing in the house looks like mom
Young Bela’s parents are barely holding their marriage together, and into that crack slips something unspeakable: an entity that looks and sounds exactly like her mother Ursula and keeps asking, with increasing menace, to be let inside Bela’s heart. Bela names it “Other Mommy.” Chastain plays both women — the distracted, guilt-ridden Ursula and the contorting, crawling thing wearing her face — and the dual performance is the film’s one undeniable triumph. She reportedly performed many of the entity’s unnerving physical contortions herself, and it shows.
The film is adapted from Josh Malerman’s 2024 novel Incidents Around the House (Malerman also wrote Bird Box), with a screenplay by Nathan Elston and direction from Rob Savage, the filmmaker behind the pandemic-era hit Host and The Boogeyman. The pedigree — Savage plus producers Jason Blum and James Wan — promised the kind of horror fans circle on the calendar. What arrived is competent, loud, and strangely hollow.
What works: Chastain, the kid, and a killer concept
Let us be clear: Chastain earns her paycheck twice. As Ursula she finds the frayed edges of a working mother who knows she is failing her daughter; as Other Mommy she is genuinely unnerving, all wrong angles and too-wide smiles. Newcomer Arabella Olivia Clark is a find as Bela, carrying nearly every scene with a naturalism that keeps the film grounded when it threatens to float off into silliness.
The central hook — a monster that exploits the fault lines in a family rather than just the dark corners of a house — is a strong one. The film’s best stretch is its first act, where Other Mommy is still a presence at the edge of the frame, and the horror is as much about a child sensing her parents’ marriage cracking as it is about anything supernatural.
What doesn’t: all jump scares, no staying power
Then the movie does what too many Blumhouse releases do: it mistakes volume for dread. Savage has said there is a jump scare roughly every two minutes, and it feels like it. The scares are repetitive, the score forgettable, and the middle act devolves into the standard poltergeist playbook — flickering lights, things crawling where they shouldn’t, a family screaming in a hallway. The novel’s most interesting ideas, about how children perceive adult fractures, get about ten minutes of screen time before the film shrugs and reaches for the next loud noise.
The ending doesn’t help. Bela defeats the entity by tricking it — pretending to offer her heart — and the family reconciles over Christmas lights in a scene that wants to be heartwarming but plays as unearned after 80 minutes of mayhem. A final reveal about matching scars on mother and daughter gestures at a deeper mythology the film never bothers to build, and the post-credits stinger — a whispered “shhhh” — is more amusing than chilling.
The bottom line
Other Mommy is the rare horror hit that tells you exactly how the sausage gets made: take an Oscar winner, a decent premise, a proven director, and a Blumhouse budget of under $19 million, and you can open at number one even when critics hand you a near-20% Rotten Tomatoes score and audiences slap you with a D+. As a business proposition, it is a masterclass. As a movie, it is a decently creepy Halloween watch with one great performance — and about half the film it needed to be.
- See it if: you are a Chastain completist, or you want a fast, loud, 93-minute Halloween scare with friends.
- Skip it if: you wanted the next Host — this is not that movie.
Other Mommy FAQ
Is Other Mommy based on a book?
Yes. It is adapted from Incidents Around the House, the 2024 horror novel by Josh Malerman, who also wrote Bird Box.
Who plays the dual role in Other Mommy?
Jessica Chastain plays both Ursula, the mother, and the demonic entity known as Other Mommy. Arabella Olivia Clark plays her daughter Bela, with Jay Duplass as the father.
Does Other Mommy have a post-credits scene?
Yes — a brief stinger shows the entity putting a finger to its lips and whispering “shhhhhhh,” suggesting it may not be gone.
How did Other Mommy do at the box office?
The film opened to $27.5 million domestically on 3,365 screens against a production budget of roughly $18–19 million, and has since crossed about $78 million worldwide — profitable several times over despite brutal reviews.
Why did Other Mommy get a D+ CinemaScore?
Opening-night audiences gave it one of the lowest grades for a wide release in years, reflecting the gap between the film’s marketing promise and its generic execution. The second weekend fell roughly 70%.