The Other Mommy Trailer Nails It

The line between horror and camp is difficult to walk: Movies like M3gan have managed to do it in recent years to great success, while movies like M3gan 2.0 have lapsed too far into the camp category and given up on the scares entirely. We don’t know yet if the upcoming silly-scary Jessica Chastain vehicle Other Mommy manages to pull off the balance, but one thing’s for sure: The trailer walks the tightrope perfectly.

The Other Mommy trailer, which is now available online after playing before The Odyssey on its opening weekend in theaters, is both ridiculous and frightening. It begins with a young girl (Arabella Olivia Clark) chatting in a kitchen with an eerie woman who says she’s her mother, along with a few other creepy things. Her father (Jay Duplass) walks into the kitchen after smelling smoke and tells his daughter, seemingly alone, to be careful. The easy thing to do would be to make the other mommy disappear entirely, like she’s a figment of the girl’s imagination. Instead, her dad looks under the table and sees a jumble of limbs with Chastain’s smiling face poking out at him. He lunges backward out the window.

The trailer gives way to various clips of the girl and her family trying to distinguish between the real mommy, also played by Chastain, and the ominous other mommy. They look exactly the same minus the other mommy’s pliable limbs and creepy smile. And she appears everywhere — even, hilariously, in a ball pit. “Bella, hey,” Chastain as one of the mothers tells her daughter. “It’s me. I’m Mom.” But is she? Find out which mommy is Mommy when Other Mommy debuts in theaters October 9. Happy Halloween!