Favoring ear-splitting sound design over any palpable sense of dread, Other Mommy squanders its fresh take on a tired horror subgenre—losing grasp on a few half-baked pro-family messages in the process. Spiritual violence and harsh language, most of which are aimed at a young girl, drag this 90-minute slog into depths most parents will not want to go.
Sweet little Bella wants the same thing any kid wants: for her parents to get along. Bella isn’t old enough to understand words like infidelity, but she can sense that something is off with her parents. Thankfully her dad, Russ, is a very present and loving father. As for her mom … that’s a different story.
Bella’s mom, Ursula, is hardly around. It would seem activities outside of the home, both work-related and otherwise, have caused an emotional rift between the mother and daughter.
If only Bella could get someone (or, something) to help mend her family back together. Or, if worse comes to worst, replace her mom all together.
Be careful what you wish for.
At first, the arrival of “Other Mommy” in Bella’s closet seems like a good thing. Even young Bella understands that this … creature … could use its powers to repair her family. All Other Mommy asks is to crawl into Bella’s heart—perhaps more literally than Bella realizes.
As Other Mommy grows impatient with Bella’s preference for playtime rather than possession, it gets more erratic, more violent—more insistent on where it wants to make its permanent home.
Whatever this entity is, it clearly doesn’t want to help Bella or her family. Rather, it wants to take Bella for itself.
For what it’s worth, Russ is a devoted, supportive, loving father. Although the implication is clear that he knows his wife is cheating on him, Russ remains present for Bella. In a scene where he mistakenly believes Bella left the stove on, his stern, but warm, attitude towards the situation feels sweet.
Bella is taught the difference between lying and the truth—with the latter playing a big role in getting the spiritual upper hand against Other Mommy.
Although the film’s conclusion is intentionally left somewhat ambiguous, audiences get the notion that the trauma left in the wake of Other Mommy’s infestation brings Bella’s family closer together.
While the film doesn’t seem interested in breaking down what, exactly, Other Mommy is, the opening text of the movie tells the audience that gods and demons both long for the chance to be human—with the word demon lingering on the screen for a few seconds longer.
Whatever it is, Other Mommy seems to possess magical powers, including the ability to morph and contort its own image, assuming the look of anyone. It can also teleport both itself and other people along with it. We see this entity levitate, climb up walls and manipulate reality throughout the film. Other Mommy is seemingly able to transport humans to bizarre, dreamlike worlds as well. The entity apparently slinks from a portal of sorts in Bella’s closet, although it clearly isn’t restricted to one location for very long. Whenever Other Mommy is nearby, a magnetic and electrical devices start to malfunction—a sign that becomes a warning of its presence throughout the film.
At first, Bella believes that Other Mommy wants “carnations,” a word that Russ and Ursula quickly realize was misheard from “reincarnation.” Bella claims that she and the entity teach each other things. In one scene, Other Mommy’s form as Ursula includes too many fingers on one hand, a mistake which Bella corrects. Other Mommy manipulates Bella’s feet to look old and decrepit, which frightens the little girl.
After carnage ensues (more on that in Violent Content), Russ and Ursula discuss how to handle this otherworldly presence. Russ briefly throws out the idea of calling a priest, saying that he grew up Catholic. Ultimately, the two opt to seek council from Ursula’s superstitious mother. Grandma Ruth has some spiritual ideologies of her own, asking all visitors to take off their socks before entering her home. She claims that she has frequent discussions with her deceased husband, whose picture is surrounded by candles on an altar of sorts in her home. Discussion of “karma,” as well as the difference between ghost hunters and demon hunters, is present. A character asks if he should start “nailing crosses everywhere.”
Other Mommy’s goal of entering Bella’s heart is clearly concerning, although viewers are left to make their own assumptions about what that process may entail. Viewers see what is presumably the entity’s true form—a towering, withered, dark, skeletal-looking mass with glowing red eyes. Visions of children with similarly disturbing exaggerated features are on display throughout multiple scenes.
A group of TV ghost hunters and mediums set up shop, attempting to exorcise the presence. A ritual begins with candles, salt and water—although the goal here isn’t entirely clear, as it never comes to fruition. Heat sensors and motion-detecting lights attempt to expose Other Mommy’s location.
Several characters, both human and otherwise, meet strange demises: Their clothes and flesh get ripped off and then float away, often accompanied by a shower of golden sparkles.
If that last portion was confusing to read, I assure you, dear reader—it’s no less confounding to watch.
Much of the film’s plot revolves around the supposed infidelity of married couples. While viewers never see these acts take place, we hear that such cheating has been an ongoing issue. A character finds out that her birth was unplanned and, at the time, unwanted—the result of an extramarital affair.
Bella asks her dad if her mom still loves them. He responds that she does but that adults sometimes fall in love with other people, too.
A married couple exchanges a few quick kisses. A few dresses worn at a party reveal a bit of cleavage.
It would seem the rules of human physics don’t apply to demons, as Other Mommy levitates and throws multiple characters. It slams a young girl down onto the ground on multiple occasions. In another scene, this girl is teleported into the ocean, where she struggles to swim before she’s transported again, sucked down into the depths of a ball pit.
While the frenzied editing and booming sound design of the film can make some scenes difficult to follow, Other Mommy clearly kills a handful of characters—often in bloody fashion. The clearest example audiences see is a character thrown into a glass case: The entity’s fingers slip into his throat, latching around his jaw for a moment, then the man is nearly folded in half backwards, with the back of his head almost meeting the heels of his feet. The contortion is accompanied by spurts of blood and loud bone crunching.
After a troupe of mediums do little to remedy the situation at hand, Russ and Ursula gather any weapon they can find in their house. This decision proves to not be the brightest one, as these weapons are almost immediately launched at them by Other Mommy’s otherworldly abilities. A knife is implanted in a character’s arm, and the demon bites another in the neck—both resulting in bloody wounds.
A father is forced to witness a manipulative vision of his child split down the middle, with her brain and organs visible.
Bella has a sizable scar on her back, presumably from an accidental fall on a sharp fence. She calls the scar her “zipper” due to its shape and size.
A young girl touts around a raggedy toy vulture, and when asked about it, she responds that vultures only eat people who are already dead. After hearing those affected by Other Mommy recount their experiences, a character offers his gun to them for protection. This same weapon is fired off later in the film—and obviously does little against the otherworldly trickster.
Consistent language unnecessarily bogs down the film, especially when we consider that many of the harshest profanities are spoken around a young girl. Around 20 f-words are clearly audible, with a few more likely getting thrown out in the mayhem. One use each of “h—” and “a–,” as well as three misuses each of both Jesus’ and God’s names, round out the verbal filth here.
Adults drink socially in multiple scenes, and Russ makes Ursula a mixed alcoholic drink. After asking Bella to deliver the beverage to his wife, Bella asks if she can sneak a sip of the drink herself. Russ agrees, and Bella claims to enjoy how it tastes.
A child recounts a time where she sustained an injury while her parents were drinking wine with their friends.
A character’s recounting of a scary situation is put into question after he admits to being “a little bit” high, presumably in the early afternoon.
A mother tells her child that, at first, she didn’t want to have a baby. She has apparently, in the seven or so years of the child’s existence, grown to love her child since then, but it is unclear how recently this change of heart happened. A child tells her parents that she hates them.
Bella jokingly puts nail polish and a face full of makeup on a male babysitter. A girl gets scared and pees on the floor, and another character jokes that his crazy mother-in-law may be drinking her own urine.
With a viral trailer that was notably attached to theatrical screenings of The Odyssey earlier this year, Other Mommy quickly rose to social media notoriety. It’s the kind of snappy, vague teaser that peaked the interest of online horror aficionados, hoping that the most affective scene of the movie wouldn’t be relegated to the trailer.
Well …
Other Mommy attempts to put a spin on the tired possession subgenre. This time, the demon operates with fantastical, fairy tale-esque superpowers. We don’t need to call in a priest, that’s been done before! Enlist the help of a clique of TV mediums! And if that doesn’t work, beat the thing to death!
The acknowledgement of spiritual evil without even a wink toward any sort of higher power to combat it feels odd. There’s a major difference between attempting to tell this familiar story in a more creative sense and just leaving out huge portions of it. What audiences are left with is a deeply confused narrative—a puzzle where the pieces don’t even remotely fit, but the film is constantly jamming them together anyway.
The half-baked pro-family message is nice conceptually, but it leaves audiences with more questions than answers. We at Plugged In are all for family reconciliation—but the film seems to imply that Bella’s family limped on, burdened by years of consistent infidelity, with little conversation between spouses about how to move forward.
Other Mommy sprints through its brief runtime, tripping and smacking into everything in its path as it barrels into an ending ripped out of a Ghostbusters sequel. Far too nonsensical for adults—and well out of reach content-wise for kids—it may be better for viewers to spend their time calling their own mothers than watching this fictional one.
Jonah Parker’s first interaction with Plugged In came when he was just five years old, after his parents read a review for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and deemed the content too intense for him. What started out as a contentious relationship between Jonah and a staff of reviewers who knew not of his existence would later turn into an appreciation for the site’s ability to present media content in a way that was accurate and fair. Jonah enjoys analyzing how our entertainment echoes the creativity of our Creator while finding glimpses of Biblical truths within every genre. He believes that Robert Pattinson’s Batmobile is the perfect mix of cool and practical.
