Other Mommy

Universal Pictures opted not to pre-screen Other Mommy for critics, and that kind of refusal usually sounds the siren for an irredeemable stinker. But this slick tale of a dysfunctional family and the trickster demon that pursues their young daughter at least has a few (admittedly familiar) tricks up its sleeve and an empathetic performance from young lead Arabella Olivia Clark. It’s by no means one of the worst movies of 2026, but it will be roundly forgotten by Thanksgiving.

Clark stars as young Bela, who lives with her devoted Daddo (Jay Duplass) and her somewhat distant Mommy (Jessica Chastain). Also lurking in the house is Other Mommy (also Chastain), a mysterious figure who, according to Bela, “lives behind the doors.” Sometimes the girl opens a closet, and it’s just a closet; at other times, it’s a portal that lets Other Mommy in to play with her after her parents have gone to bed.

It’s unclear how long Bela has been playing with Other Mommy, but as the film begins, the child is clearly more and more uncomfortable with her friend’s request to “let me into your heart,” and when Daddo and then Mommy actually get a glimpse of this horrifying apparition (which goes around with increasingly grotesque aberrations of Mommy’s face), they realize the danger that Bela is in. (And if you want to avoid spoilers, you might stop reading here and come back later.)

The screenplay by Nathan Elston (Succession), adapted from Josh Malerman’s novel Incidents around the House, occasionally plays around with the horror-movie form; for instance, Daddo and Mommy see Other Mommy and realize that she’s real within the first ten minutes, so we’re spared the usual “it’s just your imagination, honey” scenes where no one believes Bela. Later on, when Mommy’s mother Grandma Ruth (Karen Allen) calls in a squad of paranormal experts, the sequence doesn’t play out in the expected Poltergeist/Insidious fashion.

Not that we don’t get some by-the-numbers sequences (the requisite moment in which the family realizes it’s Bela who’s haunted and not their house), along with a big finale in which the revelation of family secrets and trauma is unleashed as a weapon against Other Mommy — not a bad idea in and of itself, but the film hasn’t laid the groundwork for what it clearly intends as an emotionally hefty finale.

Director Rob Savage made a name for himself with minimalist spooky efforts like Host (where a COVID-era Zoom séance goes terribly wrong) and Dashcam (a found-footage horror tale shot entirely from the POV of a driver’s iPhone); here, he gets to stage some splashier set pieces, particularly one involving a children’s playground, and while the results are clever and a bit frightening, they also call to mind the manipulation of seemingly familiar spaces in Backrooms.

Young Clark is tasked with carrying much of the film — she’s in almost every scene — and she makes an effectively empathetic audience surrogate, letting us understand why she originally enjoys spending time with Other Mommy before eventually realizing her helpless terror as the situation worsens. It’s also nice to get some quality time with Karen Allen, particularly after she was so underused in the most recent Indiana Jones installment; her handful of scenes bring with them an earned gravitas, and more directors should be hiring this screen legend.

It’s too bad that Other Mommy seems to be borrowing so much from other horror films, and not always from the good ones: There’s an unmistakable subtext by which Mommy — and her ambivalence about parenthood, and her career aspirations — is the real villain here, and that’s a trope long past its sell-by date. It’s disappointing enough that the movie has filched so many of its good ideas from elsewhere, and even worse that it’s picked up some bad ones along the way.

Director: Rob Savage
Screenwriter: Nathan Elston, based on the novel “Incidents around the House” by Josh Malerman
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass, Arabella Olivia Clark, Dichen Lachman, Arian Moayed, Karen Allen
Executive producers: Rob Savage, Michael Clear, Judson Scott, Josh Malerman, Ryan Lewis, Macdara Kelleher
Producer: James Wan
Director of photography: Lowell A. Meyer
Production design: Jeremy Woodward
Editing: Peter Gvozdas, John Cutler
Music: Patrick Jonsson
Sound design: Dan Kenyon, sound designer/supervising sound editor
Production companies: Universal Pictures, Blumhouse Atomic Monster
In English
93 minutes