It’s called Other Mommy, not Other Mother, but you’d be forgiven for making a connection between Rob Savage’s new horror film and Henry Selick’s Coraline adaptation. Both have creepy moms who are … other. But Coraline is for kids, and Other Mommy most certainly is not.
The film is based on Josh Malerman’s novel Incidents Around the House, adapted by Succession writer Nathan Elston. The trailer comes with only the briefest of descriptions: Other Mommy is “a terrifying trip into the darkening world of a young girl, Bela, who forms a relationship with a sinister entity in her home who looks uncannily like her own mother.”
The book synopsis gives a better sense of the unnerving vibe here:
To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”
When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the question over and over, Bela understands that unless she says yes, her family will soon pay.
Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe, but other incidents show cracks in her parents’ marriage. The safety Bela relies on is about to unravel.
But Other Mommy needs an answer.
Jessica Chastain plays both real mom and alarming mom, who is not good at cooking, but very good at … contortion? There’s a jump scare at about 1:15 in the trailer, below, for which I was deeply unprepared.
Chastain is joined by Jay Duplass (Somebody Somewhere) as “Daddo” and Arabella Olivia Clark as Bela. The cast also includes the perpetually under-appreciated Dichen Lachman (Severance), Arian Moayed (Succession) and Karen Allen (Raiders of the Lost Ark). Director Savage is known for Host and The Boogeyman; this is not his first time absolutely freaking audiences out.
Other Mommy is in theaters October 9.
