Other Mommy Review: More Mommies Than Scares

There's one thing I expect when I sit down to watch a horror movie. I expect to be scared, or at least feel like there's a good chance something is going to scare me. Other Mommy couldn't even manage that. Aside from one effective jolt just before the credits, I spent most of the movie waiting for something genuinely frightening to happen. I'm still waiting.

Based on Josh Malerman's novel Incidents Around the House, director Rob Savage's latest follows eight-year-old Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark), who has an unusual visitor she calls Other Mommy. This unwelcome presence resembles her actual mother, Ursula (Jessica Chastain), and wants something from Bela that no child should ever have to contemplate giving up. It's a creepy enough setup, with plenty of opportunity to make something unsettling out of it. Unfortunately, the premise is far more interesting than anything Savage actually does with it.

The movie's biggest problem is its inability to generate suspense. Scenes come and go like somebody's working their way through a checklist. We get a strange occurrence, a reaction from the family, and then it's off to the next situation without anything having a chance to simmer. There's never that uncomfortable feeling that something terrible is about to happen, which is a pretty substantial problem when you're trying to frighten an audience. It doesn't help that, despite its R rating, the movie is surprisingly stingy with the blood as well. There is one decent death, but otherwise there's precious little gore to compensate for the missing scares.

I also had a difficult time making sense of Other Mommy herself. Her abilities seem to change depending on what the story needs at any given moment. One minute she appears capable of manipulating reality itself, while the next she's simply impersonating somebody else. I don't need an entire history lesson on every supernatural creature that wanders into a horror movie, but I'd at least like some consistency in what it can do. Without that, there's no telling whether the characters are actually in danger or simply waiting for the screenplay to throw something else at them.

For all its shortcomings, Other Mommy does have a couple of good performances in there. Chastain is perfectly capable in the role of Ursula, although the character doesn't offer her much beyond being emotionally detached or frightened. She handles both well, but she seems to have a lot more fun playing Other Mommy, delivering a few genuinely disturbing moments along the way. Still, the film's real strength comes from Jay Duplass and Clark as father and daughter. There's a genuine affection between them that I believed from the beginning, and Duplass is particularly convincing as a father who loves his little girl. Their relationship gives the story an emotional center that the supernatural material never manages to develop.

Dichen Lachman also turns up for a brief appearance as a paranormal investigator, and I wish we'd gotten more of her. She's involved in a séance that I'd probably call the best scene in the movie, largely because it manages to hold my interest in a way so much of the surrounding material doesn't. It's one of the few stretches where the story seems to find a little momentum, making it even more frustrating when we're back to the same routine.

And that's really what watching Other Mommy becomes: a routine. Another encounter, one more unexplained ability, and then an opportunity for Savage to build some dread that goes absolutely nowhere. There's enough talent involved that I kept hoping the movie would eventually find its footing, but as the minutes ticked by, my patience wore thinner. A good horror movie can leave you with unanswered questions. This one left me wondering why I didn't stay home to put up Halloween decorations instead.

Final Score: 4/10