Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, a supernatural horror film starring Jessica Chastain in a dual role, opens in theatres on October 9 through Universal Pictures. Adapted by Nathan Elston from Josh Malerman’s novel Incidents Around the House, the film also stars Jay Duplass, Arabella Olivia Clark, Arian Moayed and Karen Allen.
Universal held its official critics’ screenings until the last minute, with previews taking place on Thursday in New York and Los Angeles. As a result, reviews began arriving only a day before the film’s release. Early Rotten Tomatoes tallies showed 12 of the first 15 reviews as rotten, before a Tomatometer score had been assigned. The verdict is largely negative, with a handful of milder three-out-of-five reactions and broad agreement on one point: Jessica Chastain is giving the performance everything she has.
The story follows Bela, played by Clark, a young girl coping with a new school and her parents’ visibly strained marriage. Her stay-at-home father, played by Duplass, tries to keep things light, while her career-focused mother, played by Chastain, works to maintain the family’s facade. Then a demonic entity takes the form of Bela’s mother and begins worming its way into the child’s heart, tearing the household apart in the process.
Variety delivered one of the harshest verdicts, calling the film “among the most limp and ineffectual works” to hit screens this year and arguing that it misfires in every direction, including in its tone. The review contended that none of the human characters behaves like a real person and compared the villain to Pennywise without the child-eating. It described a film built around psychological pranks involving ball pits and wonky gravity, with a CGI version of Chastain that alternately melts like Clayface and flails like an inflatable tube man outside a used-car lot. The review also noted that scenes appear to begin and end at random, as though the film had been cut within an inch of its life.
Richard Lawson of The Hollywood Reporter was less brutal but remained unconvinced. The publication’s headline credited Chastain with committing admirably to an otherwise flimsy supernatural chiller. Lawson noted that the actor had returned to mother-themed horror following Mama and Mothers’ Instinct. However, he argued that Other Mommy lacks the dread-building necessary to make its scares effective, leaving behind “an attractive but mostly vacuous collection of jumpy bits and half-baked mythology.”
Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting gave the film two skulls and published a review headlined around its failure to generate scares. She called it “too formulaic and haphazard” to inspire genuine fear. Navarro argued that Savage jumps from one set piece to another, relying on empty jump scares and flashy camerawork that hints at a stronger vision than the film ultimately realises. She also criticised the script for skipping over an explanation of how Other Mommy arrived in the first place.
Navarro singled out several baffling narrative choices, including a sequence in which seven-year-old Bela witnesses a gory killing but appears to shrug it off by the next scene. She also questioned a climax built around heartfelt confessions that arrive at the wrong moment. In her view, the film mistakes the camera’s focus on its young protagonist for genuine insight into the character’s inner life.
Other critics were similarly unimpressed. Simon Foster of Screen-Space awarded the film one and a half stars, describing it as “ponderously paced, over-directed with gimmicky flourishes” and criticising its confusing message. Carla Hay of Culture Mix called it “an incoherent embarrassment” built around weak jump scares. Global Box Office gave the film two and a half stars, calling it a hot mess and one of Chastain’s worst films.
Some critics, however, found more to appreciate. Hope Madden of UK Film Review gave the film three out of five, writing that “it’s not an uncontested win” but arguing that it delivers a form of creepiness that picks at a particular scab. She credited Savage, Elston and Malerman with grounding the familiar imaginary-friend premise in relatively realistic human damage, adding that the investment in Clark pays off.
The Matinee Show also awarded the film three out of five, describing it as messier than it is scary while praising some genuinely unsettling moments. Heaven of Horror found plenty of sinister moments despite disliking one element of the ending. Peter Gray of The AU Review, who gave the film two stars, nevertheless credited Savage with “an obvious enthusiasm for constructing elaborate sequences” that play with perspective and physical space.
Chastain remains the element reviewers return to most consistently. Variety said she goes all out with melodrama in both roles, while Navarro of Bloody Disgusting acknowledged that the actor gives the performance everything she has, even though the heightened approach feels out of place alongside the thinly drawn characters. Madden also praised Chastain for being willing to embrace some serious freakiness.
Taken together, the reviews describe a horror film with a committed central performance and a handful of inventive images, but little sustained dread, a thin script and an editing style that critics found choppy. Whether viewed as a hot mess or a flawed but occasionally creepy genre exercise, Other Mommy arrives to a largely unconvinced critical response, even as reviewers repeatedly identify Chastain as its strongest asset.
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Film Details: Other Mommy
- Director: Rob Savage
- Writer: Nathan Elston
- Based on: Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman
- Cast: Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass, Arabella Olivia Clark, Arian Moayed, Karen Allen, Sean Kaufman
- Genre: Supernatural horror
- Rating: R
- Runtime: 1 hour 33 minutes
- Producer: James Wan
- Production Companies: Atomic Monster, Universal Pictures
- Distributor: Universal Pictures
- Release Date: October 9, 2026
