How Much Should Other Mommy Give Away?
A familiar shot can ruin a perfectly good scare. The hallway appears, you recognise it from the trailer, and now you are waiting for the thing you know is coming. Other Mommy, opening in the US on Friday, October 9, makes that temptation especially strong: Jessica Chastain plays both a mother and the entity that resembles her. How do you resist looking for the difference?
The premise gives you enough to buy a ticket. A girl called Bela befriends something inside her home. Rob Savage directs, adapting Josh Malerman's Incidents Around the House. We have not reviewed the finished film. What follows is a case for arriving with fewer pictures in your head, and a couple of things to watch while you wait.
Five per cent is enough
Savage's account of directing Chastain is more interesting than a monster close-up. He describes asking her to let a trace of distrust enter a performance that still reads as Bela's mother. The film follows the child's perspective, he says, so the audience has to work with her incomplete understanding.
That is a good reason to stop collecting advance clues. If you have memorised which face belongs to which shot, you are giving yourself an advantage the child does not have. For this premise, I would rather be as uncertain as she is.
Save the book for afterwards
If you have not read the novel, I would save it until after the screening. Let the adaptation establish its images, then see what a child's narration does differently. That order says nothing about which version is better. It gives each a chance to unsettle you on its own terms.
For a scare before October 9, choose Host, Savage's film about friends holding a séance over Zoom. The screen keeps most of each room out of sight, which is an excellent way to make you study the little you can see. Or try Mama, in which rescued children bring a dangerous attachment into a new home.
My order: Host beforehand, Other Mommy without another trailer, then Incidents Around the House. You can only walk into the cinema unprepared once.
