MOVIE NEWS – Jessica Chastain plays two roles in Other Mommy, and one of her performances became so disturbing that even she was startled when she later watched herself on screen. Director Rob Savage says Chastain turned her own body into one of the movie’s most important special effects, while audiences can also expect roughly 50 jump scares and a story driven by relentless paranoia.

Rob Savage, director of The Boogeyman and The Last Rite, told Entertainment Weekly that the moment occurred during an ADR session while he and Chastain were reviewing a scene together. She leaned closer to the monitor, seemingly unable for a moment to connect the figure on screen with her own performance, and asked in disbelief: “Is that me? I did that?” Savage believes viewers may experience much the same reaction when they see the finished film.

In the adaptation of Josh Malerman’s bestselling novel Incidents Around the House, Chastain plays Ursula, mother of eight-year-old Bela, portrayed by Arabella Olivia Clark. The twist is that Chastain also embodies Other Mommy, the supernatural entity that appears in Bela’s room while looking almost exactly like Ursula. The movie establishes its tone with a scene taken directly from the opening page of the novel: Bela’s parents say good night and leave the bedroom, after which the little girl whispers another farewell into the darkness: “Good night, Other Mommy.”

Savage says Chastain’s physical performance became one of the movie’s most important special effects because he did not want the creature’s unnatural human appearance to rely entirely on digital manipulation. He asked her to imagine that remaining in Ursula’s form demanded an enormous amount of effort from the entity. Chastain responded by tensing her entire body so intensely that her veins became visible, then combined that rigid physicality with an almost syrupy sweetness. The contrast makes the imitation particularly unsettling because the creature appears to be performing maternal kindness while barely containing the anger underneath.

The film will not avoid more traditional horror tools either. Asked how many jump scares ended up in the movie, Savage laughed and estimated around 50, so viewers should have plenty of opportunities to jolt out of their seats. He nevertheless insists that sudden shocks are not the story’s most disturbing element. The real horror comes from the paranoia running through everything, repeatedly asking whether the characters can trust what they see and whether the adults who are supposed to protect Bela can be trusted at all.

(Other Mommy – Hungarian theatrical release: October 8, 2026.)

Source: UIP Dunafilm