Nothing makes a demon feel welcome like a child experiencing trouble at home. If mom and dad aren’t getting along, a demon always comes calling for that child. This is the setup for Other Mommy, where the demon appears in the form of the child’s mother–who is alive and well. Playing the role of both mommies is Jessica Chastain, and her performance in the dual role elevates the movie above its modest jump-scare aspirations.
The first sign that all’s not well within the Martin family unit is that the traditional parental roles are reversed. Russell (Jay Duplass) is a stay-at-home dad who takes care of the household and his daughter Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark). With his unshaven face and wannabe stoner wardrobe you can tell he doesn’t get out much. (Props for his Alice Cooper “Constrictor” t-shirt!) Contrasting sharply with “Daddo” is mother Ursula (Chastain), a full time corporate employee dressed in chic corporate attire, preferably black. How this odd couple got together is answered late in the game, and my initial guess was very wrong.
As a couple, Russell and Ursula couldn’t be more different. He’s the fun parent, dancing with Bela to Haircut 100’s “Favorite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)” instead of putting her to bed. (More props to Russell for the new wave deep cut!) Ursula is no-nonsense and strict, shutting off the party music when she walks into Bela’s room. Conflicting parental approaches aside, the trio look like a loving family on the surface.
However, once mom and Daddo leave the room, Bela tells her “other mommy” that she’s not sleepy and wants to play some more. She goes to her closet, opens and closes the door several times and a bright light appears. Who or what Bela encountered last night isn’t shown, but given this is a horror movie it’s fair to assume it wasn’t something good.
Morning arrives and Russell makes Bela breakfast. (No, the “other mommy” isn’t him.) Ursula appears wearing glasses because she can’t find the “sparkle case” containing her contact lenses. Hmm. Ursula asks Russell if he’s OK with her coming home late again, to which Russell mildly complains. But when he and Ursula notice Bela watching them, Russell knuckles under and agrees, telling Ursula “same team”. Double hmm.
Ursula leaves and Russell proceeds to nod off on the couch. Then Ursula mysteriously returns, but it’s not her but an uncanny facsimile. This is the “other mommy” Bela spoke to last night, and she really wants to go into Bela’s heart while macaroni burns on the stove. Russell walks in and douses the fire, only to see Fake Ursula crouched like a spider under the counter. Eek!
The real Ursula returns late that evening and finds the house surrounded by police cars and an ambulance. Russell tells her that the police couldn’t find the lady who looked exactly like Ursula, leaving them no choice but to go back to their lives. Danger signs arise again when Russell and Ursula put Bela to bed, and Bela tells her mother that she smells like someone else.
The following day marks Russell and Ursula’s wedding anniversary, and they’re throwing a party despite yesterdays disconcerting event. Turns out that the couple have a lot of friends, or more correctly that Ursula has a lot of friends. Since it’s an adult party, babysitter Kelvin (Sean Kaufman) entertains Bela upstairs. She tries to show him her other mommy, but the closet door trick doesn’t work.
Ultimately, the sounds of the party get to Kelvin and he takes Bela downstairs, probably to nab a drink. When Bela gets overwhelmed and runs away, the demon appears as Other Kelvin. After some demonic warping of space-time, Bela startles the guests by crashing the party, literally.
Now that the party’s over, Ursula confides in her coworker Frank (Arian Moayed) that the house is haunted and doesn’t want to go back inside. Frank plays White Knight and invites them over to his place. This turns out to be a horrible idea because Bela finds her mom’s sparkle case there, which confirms who Ursula has been “working late” with “Uncle Frank”.
That night, the demon makes more overtures towards Bela and takes care of Frank when he intervenes. After spending the night in a strip mall parking lot and enduring another demonic encounter at a Fun Zone, Ursula calls up her mother Ruth (Karen Allen), who claims to know a thing or two about demons.
Things get even wackier at Grandma Ruth’s seaside home. She invites paranormal investigator Lois (Dichen Lachman) and her crew over for a demonic intervention, ignoring Ursula’s insistence that they’re scammers. Needless to say that despite their fancy equipment, things get out of hand, leaving Russell, Ursula and Bela no place to go but home. It’s there where they’ll make their last stand as a family, confronting the other mommy while acknowledging a deep, dark secret that’s tearing the family apart.
Recommendation
Demons, demons everywhere. They’re so commonplace in horror movies now that the promise of seeing one isn’t enough to grab my attention. Which is why the filmmakers behind Other Mommy made the right decision by enlisting Jessica Chastain to play the mom and the demon in their movie. If a lesser-known actress was involved I probably would have skipped it, but seeing the Academy Award winning Chastain in a juicy dual role? Color me intrigued.
And sure enough, Chastain makes what would have been a routine demonic romp watchable. Chastain plays the real mom as being a bit cold and distant, which is how I typically read her performances. Chastain’s “other mommy”, however, is a delightfully twisted creation that’s clingy, cloying and ultimately grotesque. I suspect Chastain enjoyed the challenge of playing a role so unlike what she’s done before, similar to her work in The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
While Chastain’s overall performance is at the same level of Demi Moore in The Substance or Toni Collette in Hereditary, it’s contained within a much lesser movie. Other Mommy isn’t bad, just overly familiar. It’s heavily influenced by It and Smile, with a plot that’s rips-off Insidious. Thankfully, Other Mommy has a very self-aware sense of humor. The characters routinely mention how insane everything is and laugh over having no idea of what to do next. After having seen so many similar movies take things so seriously and bleakly, the levity was welcome.
Jay Duplass (of mumblecore fame) is perfectly cast as Russell, the happy-to-stay-at-home GenX’er dad. I liked how Duplass avoids slacker caricature and instead plays Russell as a fully-dedicated Mr. Mom. Karen Allen (a.k.a. Marion Ravenwood) brings warmth and her trademark caustic line delivery to the thankless crazy old lady role. Dichen Lachman (Severance, Jurassic World: Dominion) is glamorous as the overconfident paranormal investigator, while Sean Kaufman makes for an impossibly cute babysitter. Lastly, Arabella Olivia Clark is affecting as Bela, a sensitive and authentic portrayal that represents her first professional acting credit.
The first film I saw directed by Rob Savage was The Boogeyman, a decent low-budget ghost story. Other Mommy represents a substantial step up in budget, and Savage squeezes every ounce from it to make the movie as bombastic as possible. The jump scares and set pieces are staged well, but the visual effects aren’t always convincing. Savage directs with flair, which is expected for a movie with a demon who can bend reality.
The problem I had with Other Mommy is that it moves at too fast a clip. Savage and editors John Cutler and Peter Gvozdas crammed a lot into 93 minutes, to the point where I struggled to keep up with the plot. The movie easily could have allotted an additional ten minutes worth of scenes devoted to character development. Given that the novel the movie is based on (Josh Malerman’s Incidents Around the House) is 394 pages long, there lack of moments where the story was allowed to breathe was conspicuous.
The main selling point of Other Mommy is Jessica Chastain, who elevates this run-of-the-mill demonic horror story with her memorable performance(s). The movie is silly, but the jump scares are effective and the cast is solid. It’s also funnier than I expected. Recommended.
Analysis
I finally became aware of a demonic movie trope while watching Other Mommy. As was the case for similar movies, this one’s actually about divorce, or the threat of it becoming reality. The story is told primarily through Bela’s eyes, and she notices everything that’s wrong with the relationship between her parents. Ursula and Russell treat Bela well and take their parental responsibilities seriously, but they stopped being a couple before the movie begins.
Ursula is only around at the beginning and the end of the day, working long hours in between. Ursula is being discreet, but that doesn’t prevent a smart child like Bela from figuring things out. The interpersonal dynamics between her mother and father indicate that they are roommates rather than husband and wife. They aren’t affectionate towards each other. Their kisses are perfunctory. Dad acts hurt when mom asks to work late yet again. Add to that the physical clues Bela finds–the missing contact lens case, mom smelling like someone else–and everything points to one conclusion. Her mother is stepping out on Daddo and a divorce is likely.
A demon taking advantage of a dysfunctional family to join the living was also the plot of Insidious, a movie that Other Mommy is highly influenced by. In the former, the father Josh (Patrick Wilson) begins to stay at school late after his son slips into a coma and the family begins experiencing paranormal activity, leaving his wife Renai (Rose Byrne) to deal with the nightly demonic chaos. Josh checking out on his family isn’t an absolute predictor of divorce, but it points to trouble ahead.
Divorce hangs over other demon-centric movies as well. In The Shining, Wendy (Shelly Duvall) threatened to leave Jack (Jack Nicholson) if he didn’t sober up. In The Exorcist, Chris (Ellen Burstyn) is going through a contentious divorce with Regan’s father when the demon makes its presence known.
What surprises me about movies like Other Mommy is that even though divorce has been normalized in society since the Sixties, popular entertainment still depicts it as a family destroyer that makes children anxious. The demon in Other Mommy is the external manifestation of Bela’s fear of her parents splitting up. Accordingly, Bela is finally able to defeat the demon when parents act as a united front and agree to tell her that Daddo isn’t her biological father.
The closing scene implies that the family’s victory over evil might be short-lived, however. Bela observes her parents being chummy with each other. However, when Russell leaves to get something, Bela sees a trace of concern on Ursula’s face. I got the impression that Ursula is putting on a brave face in front of Bela, trying not to do anything that would bring the demon back. Ursula probably figured that she better make nice while Bela’s around, and save the inevitable divorce until Bela leaves home in eleven years.
Role reversal
One interesting aspect of Other Mommy is how it clearly identifies the mother as the bad guy. It’s obvious from the early going that she’s not fully engaged as a mother. She’s barely present when home, and then it’s revealed that she’s having an affair. Ursula’s behavior is due to how she didn’t want to be a mother in the first place. She delegated her maternal responsibilities to Russell so that she could go off and have the career she wanted.
Ursula’s detachment from the family is why the demon attaches itself to Bela. It senses that Bela is disappointed in her real mother and presents itself as a more caring version of Ursula. Unlike the real Ursula, the demon promises to take Bela’s pain away from her by being the mother she never had. The movie boils down to whether Bela will accept the demon’s Faustian bargain or not. It’s a difficult choice for Bela because there’s a lingering schism between herself and her mother that forces her to consider the demon’s offer.
I mentioned above that Russell is basically Mr. Mom in the family, while Ursula brings home the bacon. If their roles had been reversed, however, the movie wouldn’t be anywhere near as compelling. Popular entertainment routinely depicts the father as being detached from his family, always working and having affairs, while his faithful wife and mother of his child endure his absence at home. In that regard, Other Mommy could be the first movie to take the plot of Mr. Mom and make it the premise of a horror movie.
But because the events of the movie all happen because of the role reversal with Bela’s parents, I believe the movie is making a point about how society punishes women for not accepting their traditional role of homemaker and caregiver. Unfortunately, Other Mommy is too busy scaring us to have a nuanced discussion about the external problems that arise when men and women ignore their prescribed gender norms. The subtext is fairly obvious, but never resolved.
Before seeing Other Mommy, I read that it received a D+ from CinemaScore, which is ridiculously low. I suspect audiences punished the movie for how it in turn punished Ursula for wanting the life and career that fathers almost always get. The movie ends with Ursula admitting that she was a bad mother, and that probably rubbed the audience the wrong way.
Made me jump
Having Russell wear an Alice Cooper t-shirt to acknowledge author Malerman’s home state of Michigan was perfect.
It’s about time Jessica Chastain had a role where she isn’t cold and steely, yet alluring.
If the parentless are curious as to how parents suffer for their children, hang out at a Fun Zone for a couple hours.
I had no idea Karen Allen was in this movie and was so happy when she appeared. At least her last movie won’t be the dreadful Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
I love how the movie dismisses ghost hunters as actually posers with tech.
