Ursula

Bella's parents have problems of their own.

Her mother, Ursula, is often unavailable, and the attention in the household gives other mommy an opportunity to make itself seem like the person who truly understands Bella.

Right, that creates an interesting contrast.

The real mother is a flawed person and the fake mother uses that to make herself seem better, but I also think this is where the movie could have been stronger.

what you mean, but I think the family problems make the horror feel more personal.

Other Mommy isn't just randomly haunting Bella, it takes advantage of the fact that she is a child who can't fully understand her parents' problems.

Yeah that's fair, and Jessica Chastain playing both Ursula and Other Mommy is a really interesting choice.

The audience knows they're connected visually, but they represent two very different things to Bella.

um i mean she's she's up there in the same tier as jill from final wish for me where it's like man i just want things to work out for you please yeah

i can see it and i i totally agree with you it's interesting because like the actress was so good at what she did that i i would like to watch more of the things that she's in which i know we talked about it when we did the episode but she is like ursula's daughter and descendants and like i don't want to watch the descendants movies because like i don't i mean i'm 30 something years old like i mean not unless they're

horror anthologies

well yeah yeah like i think you might have to slap her movie on the wheel or something but then we had to watch the first one do we know what's going on i don't know anyway i think she was like a dancer and stuff and i'd love to see china and other things as well she has that whole show you know ant farm i believe it was so i don't know there's other opportunities to watch her do her thing.

Yeah.

Titus and Ursula are their characters' names.

He named his daughter Ursula.

I love that.

I

They're definitely not.

They're definitely not helping.

But they, Ursula is basically like, it's over and they're like, not for the bride.

Demons and humans.

What's going on here? So we then meet the Martin family and their daughter Bella is being put to bed by her dad Russ and they seem to be having a fun time but things get a little serious when her mom Ursula steps in to wish her goodnight.

Bella makes this comment that Ursula smells like someone else but Ursula kind of tells her to go to sleep and forget about that.

After the parents close the door, Bella calls to this dark bathroom and asks other mommy to come out and play with her.

And then when nothing happens, Bella goes to the bathroom door, which she opens and closes three times.

Yeah.

So, yeah, Bella's getting ready for her first day of school.

She's prepping her introduction to the class, and her parents, Russ and Ursula, are coaching her about what kinds of things she can say or maybe she doesn't want to say.

But while he's up on the ladder talking to her, this other woman pulls up in a limo.

Her name is Ursula.

And she's like, what's going on? And he's like, I guess he was...

They were a couple before he met her.

The movie that I'm going to be talking about has supernatural horror.

It is supernatural horror wrapped around the love of a family.

We have some twists and turns eventually landing on a kind of a humdrum kind of an ending.

We got great monster, cool gags, great violence, but a bland story.

If you didn't know, uh, this is going to be kind of a short one because the movie doesn't have much on the meat on meat on the bones.

I mean, let's just be honest here.

Um, but Other Mommy centers on a loving family, hardworking mommy slash Ursula played by Jessica Chastain takes charge and calls most of the shots for the family.

Her husband is a likable, but very much takes the passenger seat.

She may not have served baby bottles, but she always served face.

Anyway, as this marks Jessica Chastain's third time in a horror film about the blatant horrors of motherhood, including 2013's Mama and Mother's Instinct from 2024, I'm here to discuss the ultimate monstrous mothers in horror for this month's horror history lesson.

So let me inside your heart, and let's get into it.

Compared to the plethora of iconic depictions of motherhood in horror films, let's be honest, Other Mommy's portrayal of motherhood is a little basic and perhaps a little outdated.

While Ursula's confession does appear to weaken the entity, her past is almost designed to be deserving of punishment.

Because of Ursula's lack of desire to be a mother and past indiscretions, the movie and the 2024 novel it's based on, Incidents Around the House, kinda suggest that now everybody else in Ursula's life is suffering because of her.

And are we really still mad at women for not wanting to be mothers in the year of 2026? Come on, now.

Mothers and their relationships to motherhood are often complicated in horror films, just like in life.