*
Directed by Rob Savage.
Starring Jessica Chastain, Arabella Olivia Clark, Jay Duplass.
Horror, US, 94 Minutes, Certificate 15.
Released in Cinemas in the UK on 9th October by Universal Pictures.
OTHER MOMMY kicks off with a bang, or to be more exact Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl) by 80’s pop band extraordinaire Haircut 100. It’s a welcome reminder of the English hit makers while serving as a background intro to seven year old Bella (Arabella Olivia Clark) as she bops about the front room of her massive house with her stay at home dad Russell (Jay Duplass). It seems like a fun childhood, but Bella’s mother seems distant until she comes home later and in a seemingly emotional about face tells her daughter how much she has always loved her and wants to be let into Bella’s heart. Then the mayhem kicks in as it appears Bella’s mother has a demonic doppelganger.
You already know this if you saw the trailer over the summer, but are still kind of impressed with director Rob Savage’s willingness to show his cards so early. All of this happens before the opening credits appear, not counting the historical quote at the very beginning that pretty much gives the film’s whole game away. It is a brave move but ultimately it proves to be the wrong one as the film continually trips itself up, having nowhere really else to go in terms of building itself up, offering little else than a number of scenes where the family encounter the titular demon, run off somewhere else where they encounter the titular demon yet again.
The paper thin structure crumples even further with its core cast of characters. As the married couple, Chastain and Duplass fail to garner any sympathy for their otherworldly plight and their strained relationship. Chastain, an otherwise fine actress, struggles to garner any sympathy from the audience, especially with a late in the game confession that is supposed to tug at the heartstrings but only throws any credibility or sympathy the character may have had straight out the window. As her evil doppelganger she fails to raise the heckles whenever she pops up, (in cupboards, ballpools, the sky!) with her gormless smile before morphing into a scary demon, that looks suspiciously like it had some AI prompting behind it to help it along in a number of scenes.
Karen Allen makes an always welcome appearance but is utterly wasted, as is Dichen Lachman as a spiritual investigator. Just when it looks like the film is about to settle into a siege-like confrontation a’la POLTERGEIST in an impressively lit sequence, Savage yet again rushes through proceedings and brushes this promising aspect to the side, completely wasting it and further invalidating the film as a whole.
While making his debut with the excellent one-two punch of HOST and the confrontational DASHCAM, two low budget horrors that expertly captured the strange days of the Covid era, Savage has floundered since he wandered Stateside. After the lacklustre Stephen King adaptation that was THE BOOGEYMAN, this is further proof that whatever creative juice that fuelled his earlier endeavours has long run dry. Despite flashes of body morphing and height stretching surrealism that suggest he’s been dipping into his Junji Ito mangas for reference, there is next to nothing here that matches the well engineered shocks that made his name. Based on Josh Malerman’s novel INCIDENTS AROUND THE HOUSE, fans of that book will also find much more to be annoyed about with its careful layering and explanation of events, especially when related to Bella’s limited understanding, completely jettisoned here. At least it reminds you how great Haircut 100 were.
Iain MacLeod