‘Other Mommy’ Reviews: “Jessica Chastain’s Worst in a Long Time”

First reactions finally in for Other Mommy, and some are pretty scary for Universal.

The horror movie isn’t having official U.S. critics screenings until the last minute, with previews held tonight in New York and Los Angeles before the film opens Friday. But some international influencers, awards bloggers, and a few credentialed Rotten Tomatoes critics have seen the film, and are offering their hot takes.

Despite a killer teaser trailer that had audiences jumping in their seats, the Blumhouse/Atomic Monster production is getting roasted by some members of a crowd that typically skews positive. The film stars Jessica Chastain in a dual role as a mother whose daughter (Arabella Olivia Clark) is being haunted by a demonic entity. The film is based on Josh Malerman’s novel Incidents Around the House and directed by Rob Savage (Host). The director had rather surprisingly bragged that the film features around 50 jump scares, which works out to around one every two minutes.

Regardless, Other Mommy is expected to lead the weekend’s box office, opening to an estimated $20 million.

Here are some of the early reactions to the film, which does have a few enthusiastic fans in the mix as well.

The Jam Report: “By the time Other Mommy staggered towards its ludicrous finale, the audience at my screening had abandoned any pretense of fear and erupted into laughter … An excruciating parade of ineffective jump scares, woeful CGI, and increasingly nonsensical storytelling, Other Mommy is comfortably among the most disappointing horror films of the year. It had transformed a promising supernatural premise into an unintentionally hilarious endurance test, all while remaining blissfully unaware of its own absurdity.”

The Matinee Show: “Solid creepy premise, but it definitely starts to lose its grip. Some genuinely unsettling moments, mixed with a few ‘okay… what the hell are we doing?’ moments. Not bad, just messier than scary 3/5.”

Global Box Office: “Other Mommy is a hot mess and Jessica Chastain’s worst movie in a long time. The direction is sloppy, the score is unremarkable, and not even Chastain can save such a terrible screenplay … What should be a straightforward premise is bogged down by cheap melodrama and repetitive, failed jump scares.”

Goldwin Reviews: “Other Mommy is like a buffet of all the other horror movies rolled into one. It can get overwhelming, but that excess becomes part of a meaningful experience. Eventually, it becomes a feast for the soul that yearns for horror with substance. The film isn’t content with settling into just one form. It has many layers, constantly reinventing itself. 4/5.”

The AU Review: “Savage demonstrates an obvious enthusiasm for constructing elaborate sequences that play with perspective, physical space and the vulnerability of a child’s imagination. But while the technical ambition is evident, the storytelling rarely matches it … even Chastain’s considerable talents can only do so much with material that doesn’t offer her character enough depth beyond her unsettling appearance. What begins with the promise of something genuinely nightmarish gradually deteriorates into a disappointingly conventional, occasionally laughable supernatural exercise.”

Sean Kelly on Movies: “#OtherMommy is a film that I initially feared peaked during its pre credit sequence, i.e. the scene from the first trailer, but director Rob Savage delivers a demonic supernatural horror film that’s a mashup of everything from The Grudge to IT to Insidious … While the film is the definition of critic-proof, given how it’s tracking to top the box office, I’m still puzzled why Universal opted not to screen the film for critics and I had to luck out on a +1 to an advanced screening.”

Screen Space: “Ponderously paced, over-directed with gimmicky flourishes and confusing in its half-baked message, Other Mommy wants to be ‘elevated horror’ but stumbles trying to climb above the better films it’s seeking to be … There’s an extended sequence that rips off Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist and some realm displacement nonsense that doesn’t make sense, on the way to an embarrassingly overwrought ending.”

Additional critic reviews for Other Mommy will begin to roll in this evening, with the movie opening in theaters tomorrow.