Jessica Chastain's horror movie 'Other Mommy' is filled with jump scares. But is it actually scary?

As Halloween draws closer, Jessica Chastain's new horror movie Other Mommy is promising plenty of frights.

The supernatural horror film stars Chastain as both a mother and the sinister entity that her young daughter begins to see around their home.

Savage, whose previous work includes Host and The Boogeyman, has said the movie is packed with jump scares and scary moments. He told Empire, "Once it starts, it never stops... It disrupts all of the usual horror beats and rhythms that you associate with the genre. It's got some of the most scary, jump-filled scenes that I've ever shot."

Audiences got an early taste of that over the summer, when the Other Mommy trailer played before screenings of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. One scene, in which Chastain's character suddenly contorts into a spider-like creature, caught moviegoers off guard, with some saying the jump scare had terrified them.

But can Other Mommy sustain that panic for an entire movie? Here's what film critics have said.

🎭 Cast: Jessica Chastain, Arabella Olivia Clark, Jay Duplass

🍅 Rotten Tomatoes score: 20%

Other Mommy follows Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark), a young girl who begins seeing a sinister version of her mother, Ursula (Chastain), around their home. The mysterious entity, which Bela calls "Other Mommy," initially appears friendly but soon reveals a more frightening side.

The movie is based on Josh Malerman's 2024 novel Incidents Around the House.

Do the jump scares in 'Other Mommy' actually work?

Many critics found the relentless shocks in Other Mommy more exhausting than frightening.

Yahoo's Brett Arnold suggested the movie "gives away its biggest jump scare in the marketing, and it never really matches that pure shock energy again," while the Guardian's Benjamin Lee called the film "a rickety fairground ride filled with loud jolts and skin-tearing gore."

Variety's Siddhant Adlakha described an "endless litany of numbing jump scares that grow quickly stale," with many following the same pattern: the camera circles a character before revealing Chastain's demonic double lurking behind them.

"The effort at trying to make this work a hundred different ways would be adorable if it weren't so grating," he added.

Reviewers have criticized the movie's reliance on jump scares.

Adlakha also argued that genuine threats and false alarms are given "the same weight and energy," making it difficult for the film to build suspense. "Tension dissipates no matter who or what jumps out from darkened spaces," he wrote.

Similarly, Josh Bate of ScreenRant argued that "audiences would be forgiven if most of these scares breezed right by without them noticing. They simply don't land at all. Nothing is scary about Other Mommy, and only the film's very first sequence is even slightly creepy."

Carlos Morales of IGN acknowledged that Other Mommy has "a few effective jump scares," but said there were "nowhere as many" as he expected.

Slashfilm critic Chris Evangelista said the movie "unleashes plenty of ghoulish jump scares," adding that Chastain's fans "will no doubt get a kick out of watching her crawl around on the floor covered in monster makeup while using a creepy voice."

Is 'Other Mommy' scary between the jump scares?

For all its jump scares, Other Mommy has a potentially more frightening idea at its heart: a child who can no longer be sure which version of her mother is real.

Yet Richard Lawson of the Hollywood Reporter found the film "only occasionally spooky," saying it was "missing a sense of dreadful build-up that might help its scares sink in deeper." He called it a "mostly vacuous collection of jumpy bits and half-baked mythology."

Lawson suggested the film could have been more unsettling had it stayed closer to Bela's perspective. He applauded Chastain's portrayal of her emotionally distant mother as a "quietly unreliable and unknowable presence" in the child's life.

ScreenRant's Bate criticized the lack of mystery, arguing that the film reveals too much about its supernatural threat too soon. "The audience immediately has all the answers to the film's story, even before they've met a single character," he wrote, adding that it misses out on the "rising tension" that could have made the story more frightening.

Slashfilm's Evangelista enjoyed some of Savage's visual flourishes but argued that "the creature work is never convincing or distinct enough to be scary."

IGN's Morales was similarly unimpressed, saying the film "doesn't come close to being as unnerving as it clearly wants to be." He criticized its unconvincing CGI effects but praised a brief moment of practical body horror as "agreeably gooey."

Yahoo's Arnold said Other Mommy was "all over the place," but he commended it for "taking some bold swings," while the Guardian's Lee said the "psychological chaos" inflicted by the entity was "far scarier" than the movie's visual effects.

Nick Schager of the Daily Beast was more enthusiastic, praising Chastain's "deliciously devious" performance and the film's "roaring, rampaging craziness."

Though he found the movie "far too superficial and insubstantial to be remembered as a frightening classic," he still called it a "thriller fit for a Friday night out at the multiplex with friends."