Fall’s jumpiest new movie, Other Mommy,hits theaters Friday. The supernatural psychological horror film, adapted from Josh Malerman’s 2024 novel Incidents Around the House, follows Bela, an 8-year-old who begins to see a sinister, smiling woman lurking in the shadows of her home. She looks just like Bela’s mother (Chastain plays both the mother and her sinister double) and Bela calls her “Other Mommy.”
It’s packed with jump scares: the trailer alone had unsuspecting audience members terrified when it played ahead ofThe Odyssey in July.
If you’re going to see it, chances are you’ll spend half of the film watching through your fingers. You may even regret going later, when you’re home alone and a floorboard creaks. A movie like Other Mommy comes with multiple reasons not to see it, yet many still will.
So, why watch it?
The jump scare science
The jump scare is a surprise-based cinematic technique that Other Mommy, and numerous other horror movies, use. (One of the first known uses was over 80 years ago, during the Lewton bus scene in the 1942 movie Cat People.)
Is it an effective technique? At least one audience member who watched the Other Mommy trailer ahead of The Odyssey found it “so terrifying” they left the theater.
The trailer — a second, even scarier version has since been released — only shows a sliver of the scares audiences can expect in Other Mommy, director Rob Savage toldEmpire magazine. In fact, he estimates that there are around 50 in the movie. They’re harder to make work than you might think, says Savage. “Crafting a really great jump scare can sometimes happen without the kind of quiet…quiet…loud sting that everyone associates with jump scares,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
So what’s happening in that split second of feeling scared?
Most people react the same way to a jump scare, says psychologist Coltan Scrivner. “They jolt or jump back, their eyes widen, mouth opens, and their heart begins to race while their mind is trying to identify the source of the surprise and figure out if they are in any real danger.” Even when we know a jump scare’s coming, we can’t help but react. “They trigger largely innate responses that are somewhat shielded from cognitive control,” Scrivner explains. “This makes it difficult to mitigate your response.”
Afterward, many of us let out a nervous giggle, which is completely normal. It signals that everything is all right, says Scrivner, even if you’ve just seen or heard something that in a different context would not have been OK. “That’s why we laugh at inappropriate jokes,” he adds.
Why we keep coming back
Ultimately, we watch horror movies for the payoff, says psychologist Pamela Rutledge. As with most movie genres, audiences crave a resolution from horror movies in order to enjoy them. “Genre works like a social contract,” she explains. “With horror, audiences expect to be frightened, but they also expect the safety and emotional payoff of the resolution.”
When good triumphs over evil, there’s a physical payoff, she adds. “We can withstand the increased adrenaline from anxiety because we are rewarded with the release of dopamine in the brain’s pleasure center when the plot resolves and we feel safe again.”
But an ambiguous ending has its own effect. “In horror, an unresolved threat can follow us beyond the movie because the monster has not been destroyed,” Rutledge explains. “We can’t psychologically put it away because the existential threat remains.”
What a horror movie does to your brain and body
Beyond jumping out of your skin, you may not have noticed how a horror film can affect you, but the list of possible physical and psychological reactions is long. You could experience everything from goose bumps to shivering, trembling and screaming as well as finding yourself temporarily paralyzed, Rutledge says. You may even dry heave or vomit. Emotional reactions can range from anxiety to fear, empathy and disgust.
Those who love horror movies tend to be known as “sensation-seekers,” says Rutledge. Sensation-seeking is made up of four factors: thrill and adventure seeking, experience seeking, disinhibition and susceptibility to boredom.
It’s a trait that peaks during teen years and early adulthood. A 2021 poll conducted by CBS News found that 71% of Americans under 35 said they enjoy scary movies, compared with 23% of those 65 and older.
When it comes to how viewers like to watch horror movies, many of us prefer company (47% compared to 17% who prefer watching alone). “Other people provide a sense of safety while amplifying the shared emotional experience,” Rutledge explains. It’s why horror movies are popular date-night entertainment, she adds, as they increase the desire to “snuggle.”
Why ‘Other Mommy’ hits differently
The movie is likely to be unsettling for one key reason — creepy smile aside: the entity is Bela’s mother’s doppelgänger, flipping a symbol of safety and comfort on its head. “After all,” says Rutledge, “children are supposed to run to Mommy when frightened.”
Chastain spoke about the movie’s central fear in an interview with SYFY WIRE. “We all can remember what it was like to be a child, and then to not know what we can trust, and what is the truth and what’s authentic, and where is the safe place to be.”
When we identify with Bela, it “activates our own inner child,” says Rutledge. “Like her, we have to decide whether the mommy on the screen can be trusted. This creates a different kind of tension than the Freddy Krueger-type monster.”
There’s another symbol of safety used as a threat in Other Mommy — and one that takes the movie home with viewers. The film takes place in a family’s home, bringing to life the fear that many have of physical or supernatural home invasion. “This amplifies the fear,” says Rutledge.
So we’ll join you in flinching when the refrigerator makes a strange clunking sound.
