Other Mommy (2026) Review – Not as Bad as You Might Think

Welcome to Knockout Horror. It’s day 14 of our 31 Days of Halloween 2026 movie review marathon and I figured today would be a good opportunity to look at something brand new. This movie is slap bang in the middle of a theatrical run and it is getting absolutely panned. The weird thing is, it’s probably not as bad as you might think – Other Mommy (2026).

The Reviews Have Been Awful

I watched one of the trailers for Other Mommy just a few weeks ago and thought it actually looked pretty fun. Not like, blow your socks off fun. Just that very particular level of horror silliness that you go into knowing full well that you are going to have a good time.

“Frankly, it’s been pretty brutal. The film currently sits at 16% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average critical score of 4.4/10.”

And, to be perfectly honest, I had no solid reason to doubt it.

The movie stars the absolutely fantastic Jessica Chastain and is directed by Rob Savage who brought the world one of the best found footage horror movies of all time in 2020’s Host. Genre legend James Wan’s inclusion in a producer role only sweetened the package.

Again, I wasn’t expecting horror perfection; I was expecting jump scares, spooky set pieces, and a creepy antagonist. Perfect popcorn horror perhaps, but definitely not high art.

And then the reviews started rolling in.

Frankly, it’s been rather brutal. The film currently sits at 16% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average critical score of 4.4/10. That is… pretty awful. Complaints seem to focus, primarily, on the silliness of the story, the overuse of jump scares, the annoying horror logic, and the lack of capturing the nuance of the source novel.

To tell you the truth though, in my opinion, Other Mommy is nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. In fact, I was quite disappointed because I was excited for a whole different reason after the reviews released. I was expecting this to be so bad that it is good and it really isn’t. It’s just very average.

It gets straight into the action

Other Mommy follows 8-year old Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark). Bela’s parent are having marital troubles and her mum is constantly working. Bela copes by taking comfort in a strange, seemingly supernatural, double of her mother, only things take a turn for the worse when the double becomes increasingly sinister.

Something that is quite surprising about this movie is that it entirely eschews convention when it comes to the presentation of children in horror. Typically, a child that supposedly sees something scary is completely ignored, at least when it comes to genre films, anyway.

The movie will waste at least half its length purely focused on the child trying to prove that they aren’t lying. There’s absolutely none of that here. We meet Bela, we meet her parents, we immediately meet the Other Mommy, and the Other Mommy immediately goes nuts scaring Bela’s dad in the process.

In fact, she goes nuts so damn quickly that there is even a chance to weave in a fiendishly cringe-inducing title card as the Other Mommy is chasing Bela and her dad. There’s no preamble or bullshit. The parents immediately believe Bela and set about trying to deal with the problem.

The urgency creates some narrative problems

While I can appreciate the urgency to get to the action, this approach creates a couple of glaring problems.

“There’s very little in the way of narrative ground-work and the movie feels as though it is in a tremendous rush to get to the jump scares.”

Firstly, we have absolutely no idea who, or what, the Other Mommy is. From what I know, the book spends an awful lot of time actually developing the relationship between Bela and the Other Mommy. There’s none of that here. She simply exists, Bela knows about her, and Bela isn’t scared of her, at least at first, anyway.

Secondly, because we don’t know how or why Bela has developed a relationship with the Other Mommy, we have no clue how bad Bela’s home life is supposed to be. There are numerous suggestions that her actual mother is inattentive, possibly adulterous, and very work driven, but we really don’t see that portrayed in any meaningful way.

In fact, Bela’s parents taking such decisive action when Bela is threatened by the Other Mommy makes them look pretty fantastic. They don’t condescend to her, they just jump into action and head out on the horror set-piece road trip to end all horror set-piece road trips.

It’s extremely bizarre and it actually impacts on the scares a little. Because the Other Mommy is so poorly established, we don’t know whether she is actually scary or not. Bela certainly doesn’t seem to think so, at least initially.

Opportunities for slow burn scenes of restrained spookiness are entirely wasted. The fantastic bath scene shown in the trailer is completely absent, for example. They obviously filmed it but couldn’t fit it in, which is a crying shame as I was hoping for more of that slow creeping dread.

There’s very little in the way of narrative ground-work and the movie feels as though it is in a tremendous rush to get to the jump scares.

It’s a sleepover horror movie

Everything about Other Mommy screams sleepover horror. It’s less a cohesive, well structured horror story and more a collection of loosely tied together genre set-pieces that have little intention beyond making you jump.

The entire film plays out in a pattern of “tiny bit of narrative gel -> jump scare horror sequence – > tiny bit more narrative gel -> another jump scare horror sequence” repeat ad nauseam. It becomes very predictable very fast and you might find yourself yearning for a tiny bit of plot development or even a character with a well established personality.

Characters are introduced with little development purely to act as cannon fodder for the antagonist. Karen Allen pops up briefly, along with a group of paranormal investigators, in a collection of scenes that feel beyond farcical.

The biggest problem might be the fact that none of the set-pieces are all that effective. I mean, sure, the Other Mommy can be quite creepy at times and some of the jumps are somewhat effective, but you are never going to be truly terrified. As an antagonist, she feels fairly muted and almost hampered by her seeming dependence on having a connection with Bela.

The rapid-fire horror sequences absolutely do a number on the plot, as well. The urgency to get from one segment to the next unravels the logic horrendously. There are tons of plot holes, some absolutely infuriating character logic, and a whole bunch of story facets that simply aren’t explained.

Again, it’s sleepover horror in its most condensed form. I could imagine a group of teen girls watching this, curled up in front of the television with snacks, drinks, pizza, and blankets and having a fun time being freaked out by the Other Mommy’s creepiness. Outside of that, however, it has very little left to offer.

Excellent acting, terrible scripting

Jessica Chastain deserves a ton of praise, here. She’s seriously creepy as the Other Mommy and does a fantastic job layering her vocal delivery and physical performance to create something that does feel truly uncanny and unsettling.

“It’s hard to shake the feeling that director Rob Savage is trying to do a bit too much at times.”

I thought young actor Arabella Clark was utterly fantastic. She plays such an enormous role, here, and never falters once which is seriously impressive for a child actor. She’s absolutely adorable, as well, so forces you to actually care for the character even if you aren’t really a fan of films centred around kids.

It’s impressive how well the main stars of the film actually do considering the horrendous script. There’s a lot of genuinely terrible lines and just the screenplay, in general, is a big issue.

Rob Savage’s direction is difficult to appraise. This is a big step up, visually, from his previous films. It’s nice to see how well he can still orchestrate an effective jump scare. He obviously did a good job motivating and directing his young star, as well.

He just has an overreliance on very out of date horror concepts and rote supernatural stuff. Twitchy characters supported by twitchy camera work and a ton of really ineffective CGI make issues like the bizarre pacing and horrendous editing seem a lot more glaring.

It’s hard to shake the feeling that he is trying to do a bit too much at times, too. The whole film feels stylistically confused. I will never be able to stop scratching my head at some of the narrative decisions, too. Why he chose to not establish his antagonist or even explain what the antagonist is remains completely baffling.

Other Mommy is a strange film sitting in an unfortunate position. Reviewers are almost looking at it from the perspective of its wasted potential. They are criticising what the film isn’t rather than what the film actually is. In reality, it’s a serviceable sleep-over horror for teens and an extremely middling one for everyone else. It’s nowhere near as bad as reviews would have you believe. Give it a try if you enjoy jump scares.

Our Scoring Philosophy: A Fair Fight

Horror is a genre that thrives thanks to indie film makers and low budget creators. At Knockout Horror, we firmly believe that every movie that we review deserves a fair fight. That's why we grade on a curve. Our star ratings are all about context, judging a film on what it achieves with the resources it has.

A 4-star rating for a scrappy indie horror made for $10,000 is a testament to its ingenuity and raw power. A 4-star rating for a $100 million blockbuster means it delivered on its epic promises. We don't compare them side-by-side; we celebrate success in every weight class, from the back-alley brawler to the heavyweight champion. Please keep this in mind when considering star ratings.