Universal Pictures and Blumhouse-Atomic Monster’s Other Mommy is one of the most fascinating horror releases in years. Here’s a movie with outstanding trailers and TV spots, a brutal audience response, and an opening weekend that still looks pretty damn good.
The latest estimates put Rob Savage’s horror film at approximately $27.5 million domestically, despite a D+ CinemaScore, against a reported $19 million budget.
That’s a solid opening. It’s also nowhere near what I thought this movie could become.
From the initial trailer drop through release, the marketing materials were outstanding. I want to be specific about that: the trailers, the TV spots, the footage they chose to put in front of us. They sold a jump-scare frenzy that looked like accessible, gateway horror, with Jessica Chastain (Mama, It Chapter Two) helping bring everyone into the theater.
Even with its R rating, it had that scary-but-fun look that suggested you could take a whole group with different tolerances for horror and have a great time. Clips kept circulating. Every new spot seemed to have another image or line worth sharing.
I was sold. I said as much earlier this week, when I predicted an opening above $30 million.
Privately, if it was as good as it looked, I could see $40–45 million. That was my own optimistic scenario, not an industry tracking figure. With strong reviews and people walking out telling their friends they had to see it, I thought this could become one of the biggest horror movies of the year.
Then people actually saw it.
A D+ CinemaScore is brutal. TheWrap also reported a 20% critics score and 47% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes in its Saturday coverage. This wasn’t the reaction I expected from a movie whose trailers worked that well. Credit to the people who put those materials together: they made this look like an event.
But I also think some of the hate is hyperbolic. It’s not that bad.
It’s not a good movie, either. It’s a Franken-movie.
The first act is pretty great. It’s scary, the creature designs are awesome, and they go hard and fast. They don’t waste any time introducing Other Mommy. There are individual moments here that absolutely work.
Then the wheels start coming off, and it begins to feel like random parts taped together to create some sort of scary experience.
After I tweeted about that, I was tipped off that the film had undergone extensive reshoots. That’s what I’ve been told, rather than something the studio has publicly detailed. It certainly tracks with how the finished movie felt to me, although it doesn’t tell us what the earlier version looked like or whether those changes improved it.
And maybe the strength of the opening is part of the problem. The first act sets such a high bar that what follows feels repetitive or less effective by comparison. Instead of building on that initial terror, the movie struggles to sustain it.
Still, the audience scores don’t speak for everybody.
When I saw it, a young woman was sitting beside me by herself. As we walked out, she started talking to me about how much she loved it. She thought it was scary, fun, and accessible. Basically, the experience I’d hoped we were all going to have.
I’m glad she got that movie. I didn’t.
What makes the box office so interesting is that Other Mommy is still drawing people in despite that reception. Some public forecasts had it opening around $20 million. Against those expectations, a $28–29 million debut is an overperformance.
Against the movie I thought those trailers were selling? It feels like a missed opportunity.
Both things can be true.
Other Mommy should end its run around $55-60 million. That’s a plausible outcome, not a guarantee, particularly with such weak audience feedback.
But this certainly doesn’t look like a movie people simply refused to show up for.
That’s what frustrates me. There’s a good concept here. There are strong scares, terrific designs, and a first act that shows how effective this could have been. Somewhere between the script, the shoot, and the editing, it never came together into the movie I wanted it to be.
I can’t tell you where that went wrong or pin it all on one person. I can tell you that the finished film didn’t work for me, and that’s a shame.
Fortunately, Blumhouse-Atomic Monster appears to have another 600 movies on the way, judging by this weekend’s New York Comic-Con announcements. Taking away the sarcasm, we do have The Exorcist: Martyrs coming, and that looks great.
For now, Other Mommy has delivered a respectable opening. I just wish the movie had delivered on those trailers.
Categorized:Box Office News