Jessica Chastain, James Wan and Jason Blum Talk Bringing Other Mommy to Life
Updated: 16 hours ago
By James H. Carter II
Before Other Mommy arrives in theaters October 9, Creepy Kingdom got an early look at an extended scene from the film at Universal Studios Hollywood, followed by a Q&A with the cast and filmmakers.
The September 18 panel brought together Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass, Arabella Olivia Clark, author Josh Malerman, producer James Wan and Blumhouse founder and producer Jason Blum to talk about adapting Malerman’s novel Incidents Around the House, finding the film’s unsettling childlike perspective and creating the entity at the center of the story.
Chastain, who plays both Bela’s mother and the entity known as Other Mommy, said agreeing to the film was an unusually quick decision. She received the script on a Friday and had said yes by Sunday night. A conversation with director Rob Savage helped seal the deal, particularly his knowledge of film, visual approach and willingness to collaborate.
One of the more interesting parts of the conversation was how Chastain developed the physicality of Other Mommy. Early plans involved using light prosthetics to distinguish the entity, but Chastain pushed to see how much of the transformation could come entirely from her performance.
She imagined Other Mommy as something struggling to hold a human shape, with tension and pain hiding underneath an overly welcoming smile. Apparently, the ultimate test happened in the makeup trailer when Chastain tried the expression on a five year old. He screamed.
That was enough confirmation for Chastain and Savage that they had found the character.
The film also stays closely connected to the perspective of Bela, played by Arabella Olivia Clark. Malerman said preserving the family dynamic from the novel was important to Savage, but the director was especially committed to keeping the story rooted in a child’s point of view. That approach allows the movie to retain color, imagination and life even as increasingly disturbing things happen around Bela.
Wan said that perspective was one of the reasons Savage was right for the project. Other Mommy can attempt to communicate with Bela on a child’s level, while the adults in the audience immediately recognize that something about the interaction is wrong. For Wan, that slightly off quality is part of what makes the character so effective.
Clark was already familiar with the material before stepping onto the set. During the audition process, she received the screenplay and then asked her mother to buy her Malerman’s novel. She finished the book in three days. Despite the film’s subject matter, Clark also made one thing pretty clear during the panel: she likes being scared.
For Duplass, the appeal went beyond the supernatural threat. His character is a stay at home father whose primary relationship is with Bela, reversing some of the family roles more commonly depicted on screen. He described Other Mommy as a horror movie with an allegory about family underneath it, with the family simply trying to survive an increasingly impossible situation.
Malerman, meanwhile, seemed more than happy to let the filmmakers reinterpret his work. Drawing on his experience as a songwriter, he compared writing the novel to handing musicians sheet music and allowing them to decide how to play it. Rather than being precious about changes, he said he was excited to see what the filmmakers created from what he had written.
That does not mean the finished product cannot scare its own creator. Malerman admitted that he hid behind his wife during the screening and plugged his ears during parts of the movie. He singled out the bathtub sequence glimpsed in the trailer as one of the creepiest things he had seen.
Chastain also teased that horror fans may find some familiar influences buried throughout the film. She and Savage discussed ways to pay homage to other movies and characters while developing scenes, although she deliberately stopped short of identifying them, leaving audiences to spot the references themselves.
As for the increasingly horrified reactions to the Other Mommy trailers, the filmmakers seem delighted. Blum joked that hearing viewers say they felt ill was a sign they were doing their jobs. Chastain said friends have told her they will never look at her the same way again, while Duplass particularly enjoyed people declaring that there was no way they would see the movie, because he suspects they will anyway.
The full Q&A from Universal Studios Hollywood can be watched in the video included with this article.
Other Mommy is only in theaters October 9. Get tickets now.
