The ‘Other Mommy’ Trailer Is Scaring the Hell Out of The ‘Odyssey’ Audiences
Cinema hype is hard to trust.
Every year we hear about another movie that supposedly received a 15-minute standing ovation out of Cannes. Every festival darling is “the scariest movie ever made.” Every trailer is “terrifying.”
Most of the time, it’s marketing.
But every once in a while, the hype is real.
I’m sitting here telling you that after seeing the trailer for Universal Pictures’ Other Mommy in front of The Odyssey last night, I think we’re looking at one of the biggest horror movies of the year.
Seriously.
Rob Savage has shown flashes of brilliance before. Host was a breakout hit, and his work has consistently shown a knack for delivering inventive scares. But I don’t think anything he’s directed has prepared people for what I saw last night.
I’m telling you right now, Other Mommy is going to be fucking huge when it opens in theaters this October.
The hype cannot be understated.
Without giving too much away, the trailer opens with a young girl sneaking ice cream for lunch when her mom, played by Jessica Chastain, comes home and catches her. The two share a playful back-and-forth about what she should really be eating before things slowly start to go sideways. Mommy begins asking increasingly strange questions, including whether her daughter remembers where she came from. I’ll leave the rest for you to discover, but from there the trailer gets progressively more unsettling before delivering one absolutely massive scare that got my entire theater.
And that’s when I finally understood why some studios choose not to release certain trailers online first.
The first time you experience a scare like this, you react.
The second time, you know it’s coming.
So everyone who caught The Odyssey this weekend got to experience that moment exactly the way it was intended. I know I did.
What I loved most is that the trailer makes it very clear this isn’t another “kid sees the ghost but none of the adults believe her” story. The father witnesses what’s happening. The family knows something is horribly wrong, and everyone appears to be in danger. That immediately raises the stakes and makes the whole thing feel far less predictable.
From there, the trailer spirals into a barrage of creepy, otherworldly imagery with huge J-horror influences. It instantly called to mind Ju-on: The Grudge and Uzumaki, but with the scares cranked way up. The doppelgänger imagery is deeply unsettling, the body language is all wrong, and the effects look phenomenal. If you loved what Rob Savage did with Host, this looks like it’s going to be an absolute banger.
It’s a home run.
An absolute home run.
Hopefully Universal Pictures puts the trailer online sometime next week so everyone can finally see what all the fuss is about. But if you’re planning on seeing The Odyssey before then, do yourself a favor.
See the trailer in a theater first.
Trust me on this one.
The film is currently scheduled to open in theaters on October 9.