‘Other Mommy’ Scared Up $27.5 Million with Marketing Better Than the Movie. What Now? — SkimNews
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- "Other Mommy" opened to $27.5 million domestically and $17.7 million overseas ($45.2 million worldwide), claiming the top spot at the weekend box office on a reported $19 million production budget
- The film's marketing breakthrough came in July when Universal placed the trailer before screenings of Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey," terrifying audiences expecting an epic and generating its own publicity cycle
- Critics panned the Rob Savage–directed film with an 18% Rotten Tomatoes score, a 2.3/5 on Letterboxd, and a D+ CinemaScore — the worst audience grade from the polling service since Francis Ford Coppola's "Megalopolis" in September 2024
- Jessica Chastain stars as the monstrous, contortionist maternal entity, with the film adapting Josh Malerman's 2024 novel "Incidents Around the House"; press screenings were delayed to less than 24 hours before release, limiting reviews' social impact
- Industry tracking climbed as high as $35 million after the Odyssey trailer placement before settling into a $17–22 million forecast range that the film comfortably exceeded
- The domestic opening marks Blumhouse-Atomic Monster's biggest domestic debut of 2026, surpassing both "Obsession" and the latest "Insidious" installment
- Blumhouse's prior 2024 horror releases "Night Swim" (61% second-week drop) and "Imaginary" (44% drop) suggest a steep hold question looms over "Other Mommy," whose marketing outperformed the movie itself
Why it matters: Universal sold audiences on a horror experience the film largely couldn't deliver, with a two-minute trailer that functioned as a self-contained scare. The D+ CinemaScore and 18% Rotten Tomatoes create a direct tension with the $27.5 million opening: the studio bought a hit weekend with advertising that outscared its own movie, and next weekend's second-weekend hold will show whether the audience who showed up bought what was promised.
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