'Other Mommy' and the Madonna
Jessica Chastain is terrifying in Rob Savage’s horror film, which pins its scares on a mother who doesn’t want the job. (Contains Spoliers)
There is no doubt some monstrosity at play in "Other Mommy." But if you pay attention, you may be tempted to conclude that there is nothing so monstrous that it can be laid at the feet of Bela's mom alone (played by Jessica Chastain). Yes, she seems to remove herself from the archetypal motherly role and leaves all that to her husband, yes (here come the spoilers) she has been sleeping with Uncle Frank, yes: She doesn't seem to love daddy anymore. So what?
If we were to take the plot at its word, we might decide that the real monstrosity is that Bela's father, played by Jay Duplass, has decided to live some kind of lie because he really wanted that big house (and they skipped their honeymoon to be able to afford it) and because he really really wanted to be a father.
And so, the notion that an evil spirit can be summoned by the character failures of a woman who simply wanted to be free, who simply had no desire to be a mother, is misogynistic. The poltergeist could otherwise have worked as a resonant metaphor for the abomination of living a life with a partner who is not really your partner, for the horror that is basing one's life on a lie that gets paraded every day for breakfast. But no: the supernatural entity that haunts Bela is not shaped in the form of her "Daddo". In fact, it doesn't morph into Bela's dad even once. The movie is called "Other Mommy" and the evil spirit in question spends most of its time impersonating the absent mother played by Jessica Chastain.
In general, the father is framed predominantly as a patient, playful, affectionate stay-at-home dad who is endlessly forgiving of his wife's infidelity while the mother is defined by ambivalence toward (if not outright rejection of) domestic life, emotional detachment and most importantly by that restless unhappiness that is so often pinned on ambitious women: The idea that they are beautiful monsters of unquenchable desire and non-stop nagging. Or worse: The idea that in-satisfaction or perhaps too much ambition makes them monstrous per se.
The Madonna-whore complex is at work here: Because Bela's mother refuses to play the role of the saintly mother, the only possible alternative is that she is a debased whore whose unsaintly behavior has brought a supernatural curse upon her family. In fact, the first time we see the evil entity, it is a near-perfect impersonation of the mother and it seems intent on cooking breakfast for Bela, as if ready to fulfill one of the domestic shortcomings of her real mother. Of course, Bela's father has character flaws of his own, but these are peccata minuta. How bad is it to smoke a joint every so often while your wife is in someone else's bed?
Rob Savage's movie is not completely terrible: There is some level of innovation in the special effects used to distort Chastain's facial features and in the camera work. It doesn't seem to be intended as the start of one of those horror franchises full of cheap thrills ("Insidious" is a good example) that we have seen before. It works in the vein of the facial-contortion horror of movies like "Smile," but Jessica Chastain's performance is so terrifyingly sublime that it lifts that mini-genre of physical horror to another level.
The misogyny aside (and the rather unnecessary excursion into grandma's house that includes a duo of charlatans pretending to be ghostbusters), "Other Mommy" is something of a diverting Sunday watch. Spectacle mostly, as opposed to good cinema, but entertaining enough.
"Other Mommy"
My score: 5/10.
Directed by Rob Savage. Written by Nathan Elston, based on the novel "Incidents Around the House" by Josh Malerman. Starring Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass, Arabella Olivia Clark, Dichen Lachman, Arian Moayed and Karen Allen.
Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes.
