Halloween is right around the corner, and fans are excited to see what this year’s horror movie roster will bring. And the first on the list is Other Mommy. While the movie is not based on a real horror incident, the story had a real-life starting point. Yes, you heard that right! The film’s core was formed based on a real experience.
Rob Savage’s new film’s groundwork was laid more than a decade before Josh Malerman even wrote Incidents Around the House, the novel that the film is based on. So, as Other Mommy makes headlines, let’s look at what led to the story’s creation.
The true story behind Other Mommy
The novel on which Other Mommy is based was written by Josh Malerman and published in June 2024. And now that the novel is adapted into a movie, the audience has been curious about what led Josh to write the story. Well, according to the writer, his brother told him about putting his child to bed one night and hearing the child say goodnight to “Other Mommy”. The simple incident inspired Josh and led him to build the rest of the story.
From the thing in the closet to what it wants, it all starts with that one moment. The film adaptation, starring Jessica Chastain in a dual role, is streaming in theaters starting Friday, October 9, 2026. Josh Malerman talked about what really inspired his work during a conversation with The Nerd Daily and said:
“I’ve had the idea for some 13 years. My brother told me a story similar to the first chapter, about him and his wife putting their kid to bed for the night and the kid saying goodnight to ‘Other Mommy.’ The little story stuck in a big way and finally, recently, I wrote the outline on the office wall. Then went for it.”
Josh Malerman put that bedtime almost word for word at the beginning of the book. Eight-year-old ‘Bela’, the novel’s narrator, tells ‘Mommy’ good night and then says it again. When ‘Mommy’ asks why she said it twice, ‘Bela’ answers, “I was saying good night to Other Mommy.” ‘Daddo’ laughs and turns off the light, but Mommy looks back through the crack in the door as she leaves.
In the book, ‘Other Mommy’ is an entity that comes out of ‘Bela’s’ closet and asks her the same question every day, “Can I go inside your heart?” As incidents around the house worsen, ‘Bela’ comes to understand that her family will pay if she keeps saying no, even as her parents’ marriage is already cracking. The novel earned Josh Malerman a Bram Stoker Award nomination and a Locus Award finalist nod, and Stephen King called it “the rare novel that’s authentically scary.”
The chilling story of Other Mommy, a film that’s eerily scary even without the jump scares
Rob Savage made Other Mommy from a screenplay by Nathan Elston, with James Wan producing for Blumhouse-Atomic Monster and Universal Pictures distributing. Josh Malerman himself is an executive producer. Talking about the film, Universal describes it as “a terrifying trip into the darkening world of a young girl, Bela, who forms a relationship with a sinister entity in her home who looks uncannily like her own mother.”
According to the reports, in the novel, ‘Other Mommy’ is a thing with eyes that migrates around ‘Bela’s’ head. The film makes her a double of ‘Bela’s’ mother. Talking about the cast of the film, it features Jessica Chastain playing both ‘Ursula’ and the entity wearing her face, opposite Arabella Olivia Clark as ‘Bela’, Jay Duplass as ‘Daddo’, and Karen Allen as ‘Grandma Ruth’, with Dichen Lachman and Arian Moayed in the supporting cast.
Jessica Chastain talked about the smile they built for ‘Other Mommy’ and explained that it was selected by imagining the entity gripping onto a person’s skin and holding it while still looking safe to the child. She revealed that the smile is really tense and painful, unlike natural smiles.
What are your thoughts on Other Mommy? Let us know.
PC: Universal Pictures
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: bollywoodshaadis.com
