Jessica Chastain stars in a chilling dual role in ‘Other Mommy’, the new horror film produced by James Wan and directed by Rob Savage.
Jessica Chastain is stepping back into the horror genre with ‘Other Mommy’, a new film that has already begun to generate attention thanks to a terrifying first trailer and a jump scare designed to unsettle audiences from the very first look. The Academy Award-winning actress leads the cast of this disturbing story, which combines psychological tension, domestic fear and supernatural horror through the eyes of a young girl confronted by something that looks dangerously familiar.
The film is produced by James Wan, one of the most influential names in contemporary horror, and directed by Rob Savage, a filmmaker known for his ability to turn intimate spaces into places of constant threat. With ‘Other Mommy’, the creative team places the horror inside the home, transforming the family environment into a space where protection and danger begin to overlap in deeply unsettling ways.
At the centre of the story is Bela, a young girl who forms a connection with a sinister entity living inside her home. What makes the premise especially disturbing is that this presence looks almost exactly like her own mother. That detail gives the film its emotional and terrifying core: the person who should represent safety becomes the image through which fear enters the house.
Jessica Chastain plays a dual role as Bela’s mother and as Other Mommy, the manifestation of the entity. It is the kind of part that allows the actress to explore two sides of the same face: maternal warmth and supernatural menace. For a performer known for her precision, intensity and emotional control, the role offers a perfect opportunity to create horror not only through shock, but through small shifts in expression, voice and presence.
The trailer leans into that ambiguity. Rather than presenting the threat as something distant or monstrous from the beginning, ‘Other Mommy’ appears to build its terror from recognition. The horror comes from looking at someone familiar and realising that something is wrong. That tension between resemblance and distortion is what gives the story its strongest psychological charge, especially because the central point of view belongs to a child trying to understand what is happening around her.
The cast also includes Jay Duplass, Arabella Olivia Clark, Dichen Lachman, Arian Moayed and Karen Allen, adding a strong ensemble around Chastain’s central performance. Each presence suggests a story that will not rely solely on one supernatural figure, but on the emotional fractures of a household under pressure.
‘Other Mommy’ is based on ‘Incidents Around the House’, the book by Josh Malerman, author of ‘Bird Box’. That connection immediately positions the film within a particular kind of horror: one where fear is not only visual, but also conceptual. Malerman’s work often explores unseen threats, unstable realities and the fragility of domestic or emotional security. In this adaptation, that sensibility appears to move into a more intimate and claustrophobic register.
For Jessica Chastain, the film also marks a return to a genre she has already explored with notable results. She previously starred in ‘Mama’ in 2013 and later appeared in ‘It: Chapter Two’ in 2019, both connected to filmmaker Andy Muschietti. Those projects showed her ability to move through horror without losing dramatic weight, grounding supernatural material in emotional conflict and human vulnerability.
