Jessica Chastain is about to appear in another horror movie, and this is a nice return to the genre for an actress who has thrived in that environment. Over her career, Chastain has been known for a variety of different roles. She has earned four Oscar nominations for her work in drama movies like The Help, Molly’s Game, and The Eyes of Tammy Faye, as well as the thriller Zero Dark Thirty. She also appeared in blockbusters like the X-Men movie Dark Phoenix and sci-fi films like The Martian. However, she has also shined in horror movies, with four incredible releases in that genre, and a fifth on the way.
On October 9, Chastain stars in Other Mommy, a horror film by Rob Savage, who last directed the Stephen King horror adaptation The Boogeyman in 2023.
Jessica Chastain’s Other Mommy is Coming Out Soon
Other Mommy is based on Incidents Around the House, a novel by Josh Malerman, and it stars Chastain as the mother of a young girl. However, as the trailers have shown, there is actually a supernatural entity known as the Other Mommy who has taken on the appearance of Ursula, the mother, and it threatens the entire family, haunting their home. It seems like a terrifying movie, and it seems similar to what something like Coraline would look like if it were a live-action horror movie.
The novel is narrated in the first person by the eight-year-old daughter, making it an intense story about a child who doesn’t understand what is happening to her mother, while being the only person who knows that the Other Mother exists and has been visiting her for years. Other Mother is also able to take over the body of other people as well, and it seems like this could give Chastain a chance to play both herself and the evil entity in equal measure, a powerhouse acting performance that she has shown off before.
Arabella Olivia Clark (The Housemaid) stars as Bela, Jay Duplass as her dad, Russ, and Karen Allen (Raiders of the Lost Ark) as Bela’s grandmother, Ruth.
Jessica Chastain Has a Strong History of Horror Movies
It has been seven years since Chastain starred in a horror movie, with It Chapter Two her last foray into the genre. However, looking at the four horror movies she has appeared in, every single one of them is a great film. It all started in 2011 with the psychological horror drama Take Shelter. In this movie, she stars alongside Michael Shannon as a husband and wife who undergo a struggle in their relationship when the husband begins to have visions of an apocalyptic storm coming in the future. It is a tense look at marital trauma, and its ending is just mysterious enough to leave viewers discussing what happened. It has a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Up next was Mama in 2013. This movie was Andy Muschietti’s breakout debut before he moved on to direct the two IT movies, The Flash for the DCEU, and television episodes of It: Welcome to Derry. He showed with Mama that he was a force to be reckoned with. Chastain plays Annie, a woman who, along with her boyfriend Lucas, takes in two young feral girls who had been missing for years. What she soon learns is that a mystical force will protect these girls at all costs, and this being wants them back. The movie was a huge box office success and made Muschietti an in-demand director.
Up next was Crimson Peak in 2015. This was Guillermo del Toro’s gothic horror movie where Chastain played Lucille, the sister of a man named Thomas (Tom Hiddleston) who had just taken a new bride named Edith (Mia Wasikowska). The three live together in an old estate house that just might be haunted, with the family hiding dark secrets of their own. It gave Chastain a chance to play someone more menacing than the protagonists in the previous two horror movies.
Finally, in 2019, Chastain worked with Muschietti again as she took on the adult version of Beverly Marsh in IT Chapter 2. While not up to the level of the first movie, it was still a scary film based on one of Stephen King’s greatest novels, and it once again showed that Chastain was a great talent in scary movies. Other Mommy looks like it will allow Chastain to delve into what made her so creepy in Crimson Peak, while offering up a great mystery about what is happening with this family, a trait that goes through all four of her previous horror films.
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