Other Mommy review – Jessica Chastain’s demonic double horror isn’t nightmarish enough

There’s some effectively unnvering imagery and a cleverly icy dual lead performance but this kept-from-critics shocker is a bit of a jumbleThe buzz surrounding the viral, limb-bending trailer of pre-Halloween horror Other Mommy was such that screen grabs became memes, official YouTube channel views ran up to 30m-plus and BuzzFeed used the extremely BuzzFeed headline: “The Lady Sitting Next To Me SCREAMED”: This Trailer Playing Before The Odyssey Is Scaring Moviegoers, And These Hilarious Reactions Have Me Crying.Sure, Universal releasing it exclusively attached to the second biggest film of the year played a considerable part but the imagery was efficiently direct and frightening, a derivative scared child/creepy demon setup turned into something that felt hard to deny and increasingly impossible to avoid. But then what had seemed like the surest slam-dunk horror of the season seemed to slither away. The marketing continued (there was a second trailer that didn’t quite break the internet in the same way) but the reviews never appeared, a choice made to hide the film from critics until the day it opened. It’s a strategic decision that implies a disaster, Universal eager to keep pre-ticket sales high (it’s predicted to win the weekend with $20m-plus) and bad reviews at bay. But instead, as is often the case, it’s less of a one-star train wreck and more of a two-star mess, likely to frustrate rather than enrage. Continue reading...