Other Mommy Has Around 50 Jump Scares. So Why Doesn’t It Work? 

Introduction

Other Mommy is a supernatural horror and thriller film released in theaters, directed by Rob Savage and based on the 2024 novel Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman. It is created by Blumhouse, who are known for producing Obsession and James Wan, producer of Backrooms.

The story follows an 8 year old girl, Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark), living in a home with marital problems, who confronts a sinister entity that comes out of her closet. The entity, whom she calls “Other Mommy (played by Jessica Chastain)”, becomes more and more threatening to the family.

50 Jump Scares: Quantity Over Quality?

In an Entertainment Weekly interview, Director of The Other Mommy, Rob Savage, says that there are around 50 jump scares in the movie. He adds:

“It depends on what you refer to as a jump scare. Jump scares get s— on a lot. And I think crafting a really great jump scare can sometimes happen without the kind of quiet…quiet…loud sting that everyone associates with jump scares. It plays the hits of every aspect of horror. It’s full of dread, it’s full of set pieces, but it’s all steeped in this deep paranoia where you’re wondering if what you’re seeing is reality, if who you’re seeing is Ursula or Other Mommy, if you can trust any of the grownup characters.”

Other Mommy has almost 93 minutes runtime; it’s a jump scare every 2 minutes, but reviewers around the internet and social media stated that 50 is an exaggeration depending on how background set pieces or hallway flashes are grouped. Furthermore, many viewers stated that it’s a cheap and badly written selling point and pointed out the fact that doing a jump scare every 2 minutes is not enough to build enough tension between jump scares.

When Jump Scares Become Predictable

While the count of the jump scares is still a topic of discussion, viewers largely agreed that even with the film having few solid scary scenes and some good CGI, some of the preferences for effects and cliché jump scares repeating made the jump scares less scary and effective. Some critics even noted that the relentless number of shocks can feel exhausting or numbing rather than genuinely scary.

In Other Mommy’s IGN review, they stated that there are a few effective jump scares and great body horror scenes, but the film lacks originality and lost its dramatic level.

The Difference Between Being Startled and Being Scared

For us, this was the biggest issue with the film. Sure, the film had all kinds of scary, threatening scenes, from body horror to pure gore from time to time. No one can claim this was all bad. But the bigger issue for the audience was that most of them were senseless and empty. Some of the audience felt that way due of different reason: the effects, not enough tension between jump scares or just because of the endless loop of jump scares.

A reviewer on Rotten Tomatoes stated that:

“Other Mommy is just a succession of jump scares, with bodies and things hurled around, including Bela’s, and the film going around in loops and working its way around, painfully, to some sort of a conclusion.”

There is a difference between startling the audience and making them actually feel scared. With sudden loud noises, gore scenes and jump scares the film felt startling but without the other aspects, the film is missing something; it didn’t really feel scary for the audience.

Did The Story Build Enough Tension?

The tension within the story-line was another problem that was mentioned a lot by the audience and critics, while some of the audience claimed that it was an enough straightforward plot to make people enjoy even with its weaknesses. Some reviewers even claimed horror movies aren’t supposed to have an explanation for everything and this amount of story building is enough. 

However, for some of the audience, it was a mess that just kept throwing things into the plot and never being followed and the abrupt pacing removes any mystery or scare from the story. A review in Variety explains that the entity not having any skeptical naysayers is not helping build tension and intrigue in the story-line and none of the characters act like real humans.

While most of the audience agree the film wasn’t perfect, it’s still a topic of discussion whether the tension was enough for the story. A majority of the critics on social media concluded that the story didn’t build enough tension.

Conclusion: More Jump Scares Don’t Always Mean More Horror

A horror movie relies on lots of elements. Relying only on jump scares and constantly throwing them at the audience is considered to be a bad choice for the audience and critics repeatedly stated that the film was missing lots of features and would be much scarier with fewer but solid jump scares, effects and a slow-burning story.

The film ended up having a 16% Tomatometer score with 82 reviews and a 48% popcornmeter score with more than a thousand verified ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.

Critics’ consensus noted that the film was too silly for its intermittently effective jump scares to add up to a spooky whole. 

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