Fatal Termination 

Over three-thousand years ago, so they say, Moses inscribed the five books of the Torah. The fifth of those five books, Deuteronomy, features a lot of material that is repeated from the third of the five books, Leviticus. Similarly, the new Jessica Chastain horror film Other Mommy should really be called Deuteronomy, because it repeats a lot of material seen in this year’s Leviticus.

Repeating is not borrowing. It is highly unlikely that this mainstream horror movie released in October is borrowing heavily from a Sundance indie film widely released in June. Also, Leviticus itself has faced a lot of accusations of borrowing heavily from It Follows, and that film was possibly inspired by A Nightmare on Elm Street. But the fact remains that a lot of these tropes are featured in Other Mommy, most notably the premise that the demon looks like somebody that you love.

Yet, Other Mommy deserves some praise for subverting a lot of common tropes. For example, the common idea that only one person can see the demon and nobody else believes them is done away with very early on in this film. Many other moments feel like intentional attempts to defy what films like The Conjuring, Poltergeist, and Insidious became known for. The problem is that there isn’t a lot to fill the space left by those tropes. The weakness of this plot – essentially, three people going from house to house and seeing a bunch of spooky stuff – makes the audience remember that horror tropes are often used for a reason, since they generate tension and move the action forward. Subverting them can be smart, but must be done with care.