Rob Savage | Other Mommy | Universal Pictures | October 2026 | 93 minutes

When the preview trailers for Other Mommy included two Johnny Depp vehicles and an AI commercial for Fanta, I thought I had been appropriately prepared for the cinematic experience I was about to endure, but not even a high dosage of Carfentanil could’ve spared me the pain that it hath wrought upon mine eyeballs. Director Rob Savage – Oppenheimer of film crimes such as Dashcam and The Boogeyman – bravely posits the question: what if Coraline was uglier, meaner, dumber, and had nothing to say? A hideous, incoherent patchwork of bad actors wrestling with worse writing, retina-searing CGI, sloppy, meatheaded editing, and empty symbolism, Other Mommy might as well be wearing a bright red hat that says “Make Horror Fucking Suck Again.”

Academy Award-winning actress Jessica Chastain tumbles into the proverbial ball pit as Ursula Martin – mother to Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark) – and the titular Other Mommy, a demonic entity who seeks to “carnate” into Bela by convincing her to allow Other Mommy into her heart. Bela loves Other Mommy because real mommy works a lot and is fucking her husband Russell’s (Jay Duplass) friend Frank (Arian Moayed, who is on a mission to ensure that Jeremy Strong only has the second-most embarrassing box office weekend among Succession alumni). Chastain tries – dear god, does she try – but the material is completely unsalvageable. Josh Malerman’s source novel Incidents Around the House, though criticized for its unoriginality, was defined in large part by extended monologues that established the interiority of Bela. Screenwriter Nathan Elston fails to preserve any sort of meaningful psychological insight into Bela’s character and thus every other character – defined in large part by their relationship with Bela – is similarly left with nothing to work with past hammy, expository dialogue and an almost clinical rollout of horror cliches.

Jump scares! Get your jump scares here! While Savage doesn’t quite roll them out at the advertised one-every-two-minutes pace (this was something to brag about?), he has essentially no directorial vision beyond stringing together a lot of sudden movements and weird shit that makes no sense. What if Jessica Chastain crawly limbs time during the title card? What if fucking car alarms for no reason? Why not ocean? Hands, so many hands sprout from Other Mommy’s face. What if Bela vertically bisected in ball pit but not actually? Slide dimension! Levitating! Melting face! Please be scared! Guys, I’m begging you to be scared! So many ball pit balls in the ocean and the cars and the bedroom and good fucking lord this movie sucks.

Jay Duplass cannot be called a saving grace, though I applaud his ability to treat this material with this disrespect it deserves. After things become truly horrible for the Martin family, they resolve to spare any more actors screentime in this film and head home for one final stand against Other Mommy. It is framed as a resignation to their fate and Duplass’s Russell states that there’s still cookie dough in the fridge, after his daughter has been repeatedly and thoroughly traumatized (or should be) after witnessing people’s skulls turn inside out and explode and people melting and herself being dropped from fucking ceilings and stranded in the goddamn ocean.

Other Mommy ends on a nasty emotional bait-and-switch that manages to fail to evoke either the initial feel-good triumph or ultimate depressing realization it aims for. It’s a mean movie that can’t even be mean right: vacuous, artless slop from minute one to minute 93. In a better world, another movie could “carnate” into Other Mommy and replace it. Instead, after the credits rolled, I went to the bathroom, hoping I could piss the experience out of my bloodstream.

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Travis Shosa is a writer from Spring, TX. They are the EIC and managing editor of Dodo Eraser. Their creative writing is featured in Stanchion, Maudlin House, HAD, Bending Genres, fifth wheel press, HAWKEYE, Some Words and lots of other cool places. They have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. Their journalism has been featured in Pitchfork, Bandcamp Daily, The Line of Best Fit, PAPER, Spectrum Culture, and others.