Other Mommy (dir. Rob Savage)

by Jack Martin | Oct 11, 2026

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 93 mins

UK Distributor: Universal Pictures

UK Release Date: 9 October 2026

WHO’S IN OTHER MOMMY?

Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass, Arabella Olivia Clark, Dichen Lachman, Arian Moayed, Karen Allen, Sean Kaufman, Adam Silver, Rosie Anne O’Gorman

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Rob Savage (director), Nathan Elston (writer), Macdara Kelleher, Judson Scott and James Wan (producers), Patrick Jonsson (composer), Lowell A. Meyer (cinematographer), John Cutler and Peter Gvozdas (editors)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A young girl (Clark) is haunted by a creature that has taken the form of her mother (Chastain)…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON OTHER MOMMY?

Credit where credit’s due: Other Mommy may not be a very good movie, for reasons I am about to outline, but it sure had one hell of a marketing campaign. Its trailer dropped unannounced in front of The Odyssey, which is already prime advertising real estate in and of itself, but then it went an extra step by having a major opening scene be almost the entirety of the trailer, which really sets a creepy tone as well as one hell of an eerie turn by Jessica Chastain for what promises to be a movie that is just as unsettling.

Unfortunately, the movie is not what the trailer sells it as. While the scene is indeed in the movie, popping up just before the title card flashes on the screen, Other Mommy is much more of a chaotic and extravagant affair that aims more for silliness than scariness, often at the expense of character, atmosphere and everything else that goes into making a strong horror. However, if you’re able to just accept the campiness of it all, you might find yourself with a demented ride that you know isn’t great but has a good enough time of not being great.

The film is about seven-year-old Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark) who lives with her mother Ursula (Chastain) who’s often away for work, and her “Daddo” Russ (Jay Duplass) who’s more of the stay-at-home type. However, there’s another occupant of their house that only Bela knows about: known as “Other Mommy”, the mysterious shape-shifting entity usually takes on the form of Ursula and sinisterly keeps asks Bela if it can “go inside her heart” (this is, incidentally, the opening scene that was all over the trailers). But very quickly – and I mean very quickly – both of Bela’s parents encounter Other Mommy for themselves, leading to a frantic dash to rid themselves of the demon however they can, before it can fully consume their daughter.

Director Rob Savage, working from a script by Nathan Elston, wastes almost no time getting straight to the threat that the titular entity poses on this family, but therein lies probably the biggest problem with the movie. It throws you straight into the deep end with Other Mommy already existing in this girl’s life without any real explanation as to how it got there in the first place, and even when the parents catch wind of it and are extremely quick to accept that this demon not only exists but has an abundance of powers it can use at its own whim, it all moves by so fast that you hardly ever get a moment to breathe or even know much about these characters. It’s like there’s an entire first and second act of this movie that is just missing, where there is a greater build-up of tension as you try to figure out which Chastain we’re getting at any time, and where you learn a lot more about this family and the dynamic they share as well as some of the rockier history that this couple share with one another, in addition to their own daughter.

The pacing on this movie is absurd, with the speed as to which this script moves from point A to point F going at 70 or 80mph, with scenes pretty much just ending straight after the big showstopping set piece before transitioning straight into the next big thing. It’s edited with such haphazardness that half the time you’re unsure as to the length of time that is passing between scenes, as the camera will glide over in the middle of one moment and suddenly we’re in the middle of a moving car, where more chaos is coming towards you at breakneck speed. Absorbing it all is nearly impossible, with this family not being given any room to develop as actual characters beyond one identifiable trait (and even then there’s not much to say about them), before suddenly ending on a point where it once again feels like there’s much more that was removed for whatever reason.

Needless to say, it’s very different to what the movie was advertised as, and Other Mommy never fully recovers from being delivered at too fast a pace for any of its intended scares to land. However, if you treat it more as a cheap fairground ride, one that throws the most banal of scares at you with the purpose of ensuring the participant has a good enough time, then it suddenly becomes a bit more tolerable. There is something about the madcap energy with which director Savage frames his big over-the-top scares that feels as though he and his fellow filmmakers are in on the joke, that they know they’re not making the next big horror hit and are just having fun dishing out the insanity in sequences that often make very little sense, and come with a level of cheesy effects work that harken back to Jan de Bont’s remake of The Haunting (not the best comparison you want for any movie, regardless of its genre).

For the most part, you’re even comfortable spending time with this family and how they deal with this creature, going from one place to the next while leaving one or two bodies in their wake. Again, these are not three-dimensional characters by any means – mainly because the non-stop pacing doesn’t allow them to be – but the performances by Chastain, Duplass and especially young Clark are formidable enough to understand their otherwise vague relationships with one another, and there are times when you are weirdly charmed by how despite witnessing some rather gruesome scenes, they do still try and maintain a level of normalcy and even optimism in their routine, like breaking out into dancing when they’re gathering weapons with which to fend off the titular creature.

None of that makes Other Mommy a good movie necessarily, but it does make the film an amusingly ridiculous ride that has more going against it than for it, yet it’s hard to say that you’ll ever be bored during it.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Other Mommy unwisely foregoes the creepy tension promised in its trailer for an overly silly and relentlessly paced horror experience that way more often than not is silly rather than scary, but its acceptance of the silliness it possesses does at least make it a vaguely charming failure.