‘Other Mommy’ Review: Jessica Chastain Doubles in Dreamy Horror Film

There’s something uniquely tragic about a monster who wants to be loved. Most supernatural villains are content to stalk, maim, and murder their victims, but the titular terror of “Other Mommy” has a much, much more intimate ambition. She wants a little girl to invite her inside her heart. And like any good manipulator, she has to convince the kid it was actually her idea first.

Whether or not you’ve had her arrival spoiled by the trailer, Other Mommy’s big kitchen entrance makes you want to laugh and scream at the same time — every time. Played by Oscar winner Jessica Chastain, this freakish apparition can twist her body into impossible shapes, stretch her neck around corners, and occupy just about any cramped, scary space. What she really wants, of course, is to be a person. But, uh, how do you smooth over a home invasion?

That’s the wonderfully warped foundation of director Rob Savage‘s adaptation of Josh Malerman’s 2024 novel “Incidents Around the House.” Starring Chastain as both a disconnected mother and the obsessive entity threatening to replace her, Universal Pictures’ “Other Mommy” is a hypnotic and frequently bewildering exercise in domestic horror that turns the actress’s gift for conveying tenderness and tenacity against itself. The resulting collision is frequently ridiculous, rarely frightening, and strangely sad.

At the center of this nightmare is Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark): an eight-year-old whose understanding of the world is still being assembled from whatever the adults around her are willing to explain. Her mother, Ursula (Chastain), and father, Russ (Jay Duplass), have problems of their own, although neither seems particularly aware of how much their daughter already understands. When a mysterious presence begins appearing around the house, the child initially treats the visitor with the cautious curiosity one might extend to an imaginary friend.

That would be a more reassuring arrangement if Other Mommy weren’t so obviously… wrong.

Chastain has already encountered Stephen King’s dancing clown in “It Chapter Two,” and her new supernatural alter ego feels less like Pennywise’s girlfriend than maybe one of his quieter pals from college. Other Mommy is manipulative and bendy, sure, but more than that, she’s so, so upset. Pennywise and the Other Mother from “Coraline” at least had somewhere to retreat when their victims rejected them. But Other Mommy, hiding in the very structure of the house, seems to crave existence itself, and Chastain channels that pitch-black despair with everything she’s got. Her most impressive special effect isn’t an elongated limb or grotesquely contorted face — but the sorrow, fear, and rage she can reflect in her eyes.

The actress has considerable experience playing mothers in distress, from “The Tree of Life” and “Take Shelter” to the otherworldly family nightmare of “Mama.” She’s especially convincing opposite young performers, and Clark gives her plenty to work with here. Before the house starts filling with deflated skin, confetti, broken glass, and blood, Chastain is even allowed to look freakin’ dynamite in a pair of dark-rimmed glasses.

Even so, Ursula is a more complicated proposition than that wholesome image suggests. At times, the real mother has a vaguely “Gone Girl”-esque air of domestic volatility, as though something might ignite at any moment. In fact, Other Mommy herself, routinely showing up a bit wet(?), practically smells like gasoline. There’s an unmistakable impression throughout that this woman… or whatever is pretending to be one… might burn down the house.

And yet, the creature becomes a surprisingly normalized part of the film‘s world. Even when her spine loops around Bela like an illustration from a particularly disturbed Dr. Seuss book, she eventually starts to resemble a fleshy extension of the family’s sleek modern furniture. Savage’s movie is so committed to its own absurdity that the extraordinary begins to feel mundane.

That strange acclimation extends to the human characters, whose emotional histories are gradually filled in. Duplass is particularly interesting in this environment. An icon of mumblecore, he looks as though he’s wandered onto the wrong set, but his unassuming presence eventually makes him feel like family. A quiet moment in which Russ performs a melancholy little dance for his daughter proves unexpectedly heartbreaking.

Still, by the time the family starts exploring ways to exorcise their unwanted houseguest, it’s difficult not to wish Russ were something more useful. Like a priest.

Their paranormal intervention involves Dichen Lachman as Lois Anthony, in a role best described as Chris Hansen for ghosts. Her solemn declaration that “we wish to be heard by the entity known as Other Mommy” is an exquisitely goofy piece of genre nonsense, delivered with precisely the Loomis-level conviction it deserves. By this point, the audience knows the monster a little too well to be properly terrified of her. Watching everyone attempt to conduct official business with the thing is practically irresistible.

Clark deserves considerable credit for keeping these escalating absurdities grounded. Magnetic enough to hold her own against two major acting talents and an exhausting parade of special effects, the young performer maintains a convincing sense of agency even as Bela’s surroundings become physically overwhelming.

When so-called Uncle Frank (Arian Moayed) treats her as though she’s younger than she really is, the sinister appeal of Other Mommy’s attention becomes painfully clear. The creature offers Bela something the adults frequently deny her: the feeling that she’s in control. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth and the chaos cranks up quickly.

Savage, whose pandemic-era breakthrough “Host” turned the limitations of a Zoom call into a remarkably effective horror mechanism, approaches this material with almost the opposite visual philosophy. Where the 2020 found-footage film fits terror into a rigid digital window, “Other Mommy” sends its camera sailing through walls, ceilings, and the metaphysical fringes of reality itself. The movie shifts between Bela’s more innocent perspective, and Other Mommy’s impossible viewpoint: a maddening lens of entitlement and pain that never stops.

Between a surreal balloon-popping nightmare on the ceiling and an abundance of brightly colored ball-pit balls through the film’s second half, “Other Mommy” sometimes resembles “Skinamarink” by way of “The Backrooms.” Its aggressively artificial imagery evokes the kind of AI-slop, dreamcore videos that tend to populate social media these days, thrusting the audience into increasingly unsettling spaces that seem generated from a stranger’s hazy childhood.

Other Mommy herself can rearrange her body like a tangram puzzle, and in doing so, she doesn’t just violate the laws of anatomy. She comes across as personally offended that anyone would expect her to obey them, and the visual extravagance of that slippery confidence is sincerely fun at first. Unfortunately, anything can happen — and does keep happening. And happening and happening and happening.

After an action-packed confrontation that comes midway but feels like the final 15 minutes of a different Blumhouse movie, “Other Mommy” kicks the suspense into high gear and largely lets it stay there. The family’s subsequent road trip to find safety gives the story an appealing sense of exploration. But just when the atmosphere starts to settle into a specific style, the movie repeatedly threatens to accordion away from itself. A gigantic Other Mommy intrudes on the frame, or some other bizarre impossibility blows the established scene apart like pixie dust.

The ending, which substantially departs from Malerman’s novel, offers a richer choice than the source material. Rather than treating parental love as an uncomplicated defense, Nathan Elston’s screenplay allows Ursula to acknowledge a more shameful truth. A Chastain delivers a beautiful climactic monologue that almost sees the accumulated melodrama pay off. Almost.

Whether she’s behaving like an action hero preparing to defend her family, or looking like a storyboard ripped straight from the production of “Courage the Cowardly Dog,” Chastain is perpetually impossible to ignore. There’s plenty of the actress in “Other Mommy,” and yet, it’s somehow tempting to ask for more. But by the climax, Bela and her parents’ problems have become so bizarre that just leaving the theater felt like trying to shake someone else’s therapist.

That said, “Other Mommy” is an exceptionally weird movie, and its monster is memorable enough that it deserves applause for that. More importantly, Savage’s evolution from the lo-fi “Host” to the studio-backed “Boogeyman” and now this technically extravagant explosion suggests an artist already figuring out how to stretch the boundaries of what he can accomplish.

Savage, with an appetite for spectacle that sometimes outpaces his patience for storytelling, stays genuine enough in his emotion that it makes the creative excess worth watching. As for Other Mommy, the filmmaker ultimately makes her easy to understand — even if their movie proves a bit harder to love.

Grade: C+

A Universal Pictures release, “Other Mommy” is now playing in theaters.