Other Mommy

I was on the fence about Other Mommy but, when my nephew expressed an interest, I thought it would be fun to see it with him.  We went to a Thursday preview last night and we had more fun discussing how bad it is on the drive home than we did watching it. Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark) is a seven-year-old girl who lives with her disinterested mom Ursula (Jessica Chastain) and her distracted dad Russ (Jay Duplass).  She seeks out the supernatural entity hiding in her closet, which she calls "Other Mommy" because it takes the form of her mother, whenever she is left alone.  Other Mommy repeatedly asks Bela to let her into her heart so she can protect her from her dysfunctional family but in reality she just wants to possess her body in order to be reincarnated.  The secrets that have been festering between Ursula and Russ, including the affair she is having with Frank (Arian Moayed), make Other Mommy more and more powerful which ultimately leads to a showdown between her and Bela.  I enjoyed the theme that children often internalize the tension between their parents and there are some interesting visuals that show what is happening from Bela's distorted perspective.  However, this theme is not developed very well and the conclusion is incredibly underwhelming because nothing has changed in the family dynamic (I've heard that it differs from the source material).  The jump scares in this movie have been hyped a lot in the marketing but I did not find it scary at all.  In fact, the only unsettling scene is the one used in the first trailer.  To be fair, the trailer did freak out the audience the first time I saw it but it no longer evokes the same sense of dread after multiple viewings.  The tone is all over the place and the performances are strangely inert (Chastain is weird rather than menacing and I wondered more than once why an actress of her caliber agreed to appear in this B-movie).  This is definitely something you can wait to see when it streams but only if you have nothing better to do.