Other Mommy (2026) Review: 50 Jump Scares, One Good One — Jessica Chastain's Double Act Can't Save a Scare-Count Over Story

Rob Savage's Blumhouse horror about a mother who isn't quite herself opens to a 17% Rotten Tomatoes score, with critics split on everything except Chastain.

Other Mommy opens wide today, October 9, from director Rob Savage, the filmmaker behind Host and The Boogeyman, adapting Josh Malerman's novel Incidents Around the House. Jessica Chastain plays dual roles: a mother, and the thing in the closet that looks and sounds exactly like her, asking an 8-year-old girl named Bela to let it into her heart. It's a Blumhouse and Atomic Monster production distributed by Universal, with Jay Duplass, Dichen Lachman and Arian Moayed rounding out the cast. It runs 93 minutes and is rated R for language and some bloody violence.

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Critics were not kind. As of today the film sits at 17% on Rotten Tomatoes from 23 reviews and 33 on Metacritic from 4 critics, Metacritic's "generally unfavorable" range. Variety's review, scored 10 by Metacritic, called the finished product "among the most limp and ineffectual works to grace the screen this year, misfiring in every direction, including and especially its tone." Slant Magazine's Charles Lyons-Burt was somewhat kinder at 63, but still backhanded about it, writing that the film "plays like a run-on sentence with no periods or semicolons, packing in a series of quickly cut incidents."

The specific complaint, echoed across multiple reviews, is quantity over craft. Savage has said publicly that the film contains roughly 50 jump scares, and critics felt that math. Doug Jamieson of The Jam Report described an "excruciating parade of ineffective jump scares, woeful CGI" paired with "increasingly nonsensical storytelling." Peter Gray of The AU Review put it more bluntly: the film "has absolutely no idea what to do once it's in the room" — meaning once the entity is actually revealed, the scares that worked as a slow-build premise don't have anywhere left to go.

What's getting real praise is Chastain. IGN's Carlos Morales gave the film a 40 but singled her out: "Jessica Chastain is great in the lead role, and there are a few effective jump scares, but the film's lack of originality means there simply isn't enough blood in the stone on a dramatic level for Other Mommy to satisfy." Peter Gray credited her "lack of vanity and the bodily contortions she gives the entity" — playing both the warm, ordinary mother and the thing wearing her face is a genuine double act, and even reviewers who disliked the movie didn't blame her for it. UK Film Review's Hope Madden found the film still delivers "creepiness that picks a particular scab" in isolated moments, even if it can't sustain that feeling.

If you've seen the trailer, you already know the premise: a child, a parent who isn't quite their parent anymore, and a house that stops feeling safe after dark. That setup is a well-worn one in recent horror — a domestic doppelganger story rather than a slasher or a haunted-house film — and the reviews suggest Savage leans on jump-scare frequency to paper over a story that runs out of ideas once the "other mommy" is fully in the light. If body-horror transformation and a committed lead performance are enough for you on their own, there's something here; if you need the scares to build toward something, the consensus says this one doesn't.

Our verdict: Other Mommy earns a FilmRated Score of 25 out of 100, close to the average of its Rotten Tomatoes score (17) and Metacritic score (33) as of October 9, 2026. Chastain's performance is the one element multiple critics agree is worth seeing; the scares, story and CGI around her are where the reviews turn sharply negative. This is a rental, not a theater trip, unless you're going specifically for Chastain.