Grade: B-
There’s something I admire about a horror movie that commits to its own supernatural nonsense. In Other Mommy, when balls from a ball pit start accumulating inside a family’s car, they aren’t a hallucination, a nightmare, or some visual metaphor for a character’s deteriorating mental state. They’re actually in the car. When the doors open, the balls spill out into the parking lot. This is really happening, and the movie isn’t going to let anybody off the hook by pretending otherwise.
I also appreciate that this isn’t one of those horror stories where only the kid can see the monster, and nobody believes the kid. Other Mommy doesn’t hide. She shows up wherever she wants, and whoever happens to be there can see her. Other Mommy is an entity who has been appearing to 8-year-old Bela. She looks just like her mother, and Jessica Chastain plays both roles. Other Mommy wants to enter Bela’s heart. Once she does, IF she does, they will switch places. OM will get to be a human, something she’s always wanted, while I guess Bela will be a spirit haunting someone else, and trying to get into their heart. Sometimes Bela doesn’t know which mommy she’s talking to, until the oft-repeated question gives it away. “Can I go into your heart?”
It’s based on a book called Incidents Around the House. I’m glad the movie is called Other Mommy, as it’s the better and more obvious title. I’ve read it. It’s told from Bela’s point of view. The text is left-justified when there’s narration/action. Any spoken dialogue is indented in the center, with spaces between.
Jay Duplass, as Bela’s dad, is pretty much exactly how I pictured the character when I read the book. Duplass wrote and directed The Baltimorons, which I thought was an interesting movie, so I was intrigued to see him in front of the camera. He’s terrific as Bela’s dad. Jessica Chastain is excellent in both roles. “Keep Jessica Chastain away from me” is a thought I never expected to have, but here we are. Karen Allen plays Bela’s grandmother, and it’s nice to see her again.
Director Rob Savage (The Boogeyman) employs some interesting filmmaking techniques. When the family is on the run, Bela’s mother says something about needing some quiet time, and we immediately cut to a noisy fast-food restaurant, complete with running kids, slides, and ball pits. It’s a terrific transition. There’s also a paranormal ghostbusting crew monitoring the house, trying to figure out what’s going on. Other Mommy is invisible to them, until one of the investigators sneezes and sprays snot particles all over her, exposing her presence. I laughed.
Savage also makes some improvements on the source material. The movie ends differently from the book, and I prefer the movie’s ending. It does a better job of introducing a metaphor, carrying it through the story, and bringing it to a satisfying conclusion. I had a similar wish for Savage’s The Boogeyman, which ended in a more conventional showdown when I thought there was an opportunity to do something more interesting with its underlying themes. Other Mommy comes closer to delivering what I wanted from that movie.
Ultimately, though, Other Mommy is based on a book that I thought was just decent, and there’s only so much a movie can do to overcome the limitations of its source material. Savage makes choices that frequently had me thinking “oh, that’s good,” and I appreciate what he does with the material, but I wasn’t completely won over.
Grade: B-
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