Movies
[Remember This?] When Horror Movies Were Fun!
“Remember This?” is a new feature that highlights cool anecdotes from the horror genre’s storied past. It’ll pop up from time to time, giving your brain a spark of an insane memory before you move on with your day.
A few weeks back I was feeling a little soul sick. Not in a hugely existential way, but the movies I was watching were getting me down. I had watched a bunch of screeners and, while I loved many of them on a critical level, an emotional level and even a visceral level, they just weren’t much fun. I’m not complaining, I know I’m immensely lucky and I wouldn’t trade a “bad” week of watching screeners for a “good” week anywhere else. But after watching a seemingly endless parade of movies that were either incredibly serious, post apocalyptic, or just brutally depressing – I needed a palate cleanser. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for bleak horror, but there are so many other colors to our gruesome tapestry that have increasingly gone unused.
I’m not sure what it is but I sometimes feel like a lot of modern horror filmmakers are trying to “out hardcore” each other in terms of sheer dourness. That’s an odd competition to me. I’d rather see more writers and directors try to top each other in inventiveness, scares, characters, plotting and good old fashioned splatter.
That Friday night, I happened upon Chuck Russell’s 1988 The Blob remake. Written by Frank Darabont (it’s Russell and Darabont’s followup to their success with A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors) and starring Shawnee Smith and Kevin Dillon – it was just what I needed. An amazingly fun 1st act, a 2nd act that flew by and a 3rd act that went absolutely apesh*t (with added conspiracy theory)! Lots of gore, interesting characters, a good sense of humor and near perfect pacing. It was such a breath of fresh air.
What about you? There’s all kinds of room for more serious fair, but what are some horror movies you think are truly fun? And are there enough of them?
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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