Other Mommy review

OTHER MOMMY: 

JESSICA CHASTAIN HORROR MOVIE GOES HORRIBLY WRONG IN THE BEST WAY! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: * out of 4

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Jessica Chastain in Other Mommy

 

            Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty, Molly’s Game, It: Chapter Two) unleashes her…we’ll say spooky side in Other Mommy, the new horror film produced by James Wan (Insidious franchise, The Conjuring franchise, Backrooms) and directed by Rob Savage (Strings, Dashcam, The Boogeyman). The trailer gave me a pretty good idea of what kind of film this was going to be, and it seemed like it wasn’t going to be taken seriously; it definitely looked like a fun, silly horror movie with Jessica Chastain simultaneously being creepy and funny at the same time. 

            I was onboard for it; I think Chastain is a phenomenal actress and even when a movie isn’t particularly great (Mama, It: Chapter Two), she is usually great in it. Oh, I was unprepared for what this movie would turn out to be because My God, Other Mommy is the absolute best kind of bad. 

            Just about everything about this movie is done entirely wrong; the acting outside of Chastain is wooden, the dialogue is awful, and the story is so bombastic and batshit crazy that I will never forget this experience. Where Verity was dull and a complete waste of a good premise, this film goes for broke and doesn’t give a fuck. 

            The film follows a young girl named Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark) who lives with her father Russ (Jay Duplass-Cyrus, Jeff, Who Lives at Home, Transparent) and,d of course, her mother Ursula (Chastain). However, she encounters a supernatural entity that resembles her mother and has targeted her with the desire to go into her heart, and all sorts of terror and chaos begin to unfold for Bela and her family. 

            The film also stars Dichen Lachman (Neighbours, Dollhouse, Severance) as Lois, Arian Moayed (Succession, Marvel Cinematic Universe, You Hurt My Feelings) as Uncle Frank, Karen Allen (Indiana Jones franchise, Starman, The Perfect Storm) as Grandma Ruth, and Sean Kaufman (The Summer I Turned Pretty, Stumble, For All Mankind) as Kelvin. 

            Overall, Other Mommy had the potential to be a fun, spooky horror movie with plenty of creeps and humor, but somewhere along the lines, it de-evolved into a glorious, misdirected disaster that must be seen to be believed. I will give Jessica Chastain credit for giving her all to this movie, and she does pull creepy off quite well; just the scenes where she, as Other Mommy, is giving a blank stare at the daughter are kind of unsettling, but everything surrounding her is complete ass. 

            Besides Chastain, just about everyone else’s performances are wooden, with very awkward line deliveries and “attempts” at comedy. The performances were giving me bad Shyamalan vibes with how monotone the cast read their line,s with one exception:n, Karen Allen as the grandmother, God bless her, is trying to give a heartfelt performance when she’s introduced, but the script gives her very little to work with. 

            The best scene is the opening, which was also the trailer because it was the only part of the movie with any real tension, and it was an effective way to start the film off. Everything after that is complete nonsense and chaos, with the film trying to be about something more only to fail spectacularly at its message. 

            There are some good setups for scares here, one involving a fast food restaurant Playplace, but the more they try to make these sequences scarier as they go on, the more unintentionally comedic they get. Maybe if Other Mommy could shut the fuck up for just one second and let these sequences naturally be scary, perhaps they might have been effective. 

            I will say the paranormal investigation scene is pretty neat even if it happens right out of nowhere and doesn’t really match the tone of the film. But it was a genuinely fun moment with some gnarly kills and gave the movie some energy outside of unintentionally funny trash. 

            The CGI on the entity itself is really bad and not the least bit scary, especially for an R-rated horror movie. This thing looked like it belonged in one of the Insidious movies…one of the bad ones; it’s just a giant, demonic monster thing that’s nowhere near as frightening as it was when it was disguised as Jessica Chastain. 

            Probably the most glaring problem with the movie is there’s no real family connection to the demon, which could have made for some long overdue emotional investment. This aspect could have given the film a lot of levity with a family coming face to face with its demons, but Chastain and Duplass have virtually no chemistry,y and Arabella Olivia Clark’s Bela, nothing against the actress, makes incredibly dumb decisions throughout the film, and the final confrontation between her and Other Mommy is just plain silly. 

            Had this movie been under a director like Sam Raimi, who knows how to do over-the-top horror with a sense of humor, maybe Other Mommy could have worked, ed and you can see Rob Savage trying to replicate that Evil Dead feel in certain scenes with Other Mommy contorting herself in crazy ways and constantly taunting her victim. However, we also wouldn’t have had one of the most ironically entertaining films of the year without these misfortunes. 

            Other Mommy is a beautifully awful movie that bad movie lovers will have a ball with-- the over-the-top premise, the acting that ranges from going big to stilted and awkward, and absolutely ridiculous moments that had me in stitches. However, if you’re looking for a legitimately scary movie about an “Other Mother”, do not go see this; watch Coraline instead.