Jessica Chastain's supernatural horror film Other Mommy has haunted its way to the top of the domestic box office this weekend — but the movie's biggest fright may be the score it just received from actual moviegoers.
Released in theaters on Friday, October 9, the Blumhouse-Atomic Monster production pulled in a strong $3.6 million from Thursday preview screenings across 2,850 screens, according to industry trackers cited by Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter. The film is now on pace for an opening weekend in the range of $20 million to $27.5 million on 3,365 screens — enough to claim the No. 1 spot at the North American box office.
That is a remarkable over-performance for a film that cost just $18 million to $19 million to make. Pre-release projections had the film opening anywhere from $17 million to $22 million, with some late forecasts climbing as high as $35 million. Either way, a debut anywhere near these figures makes Other Mommy an instant commercial success on paper.
But here is the twist: the opening-night audience reaction tells a very different story. CinemaScore — the industry-standard poll of opening-night moviegoers — has given Other Mommy a D+, a harsh verdict that ranks among the weakest scores for a wide-release horror film in recent years.
The split between the strong box-office start and the punishing audience grade sets up one of the most fascinating showdowns of the fall movie season — and raises a real question about how long this haunted house can keep its doors open.
The D+ score matters because horror films live and die by word of mouth. A D+ from CinemaScore typically signals that a film will be heavily front-loaded, meaning most of its audience shows up on opening weekend and then falls off sharply. For Universal and Blumhouse, the saving grace is simple math: with a lean production budget and a strong opening, the film should be comfortably profitable regardless of what happens in week two.
The story behind the scare
Other Mommy is based on Incidents Around the House, the 2024 novel by Josh Malerman — the author best known for Bird Box, which became a Netflix phenomenon and one of the streamer's most-watched original films.
The novel has one of the creepiest origin stories in recent publishing. Malerman has said the idea came from a real incident involving his brother and niece: one night, while his brother was tucking his daughter into bed, the little girl turned and wished good night to “Other Mommy” — seemingly speaking to no one at all. That unsettling moment grew into the novel, and now into a major motion picture.
In the film, Chastain plays a dual role: Ursula, a mother in an already strained marriage, and a sinister supernatural entity that has taken on her exact appearance. Eight-year-old Bela, played by newcomer Arabella Olivia Clark, discovers that something is coming out of her closet — something that looks and sounds just like her mother, and that she begins calling “Other Mommy.” What starts as a strange bond between the child and the entity turns into a full-blown threat to the household.
The cast is rounded out by Jay Duplass as the husband, alongside Dichen Lachman, Arian Moayed, Karen Allen, Sean Kaufman, Adam Silver, and Rosie Anne O'Gorman. The screenplay was written by Nathan Elston, and the film is directed by Rob Savage, the British filmmaker behind the pandemic-shot horror hit Host and 2023's The Boogeyman. Producing is genre powerhouse James Wan through the merged Blumhouse-Atomic Monster banner.
The film runs a lean 93 minutes and is rated R for bloody violence and language. It was originally scheduled for release on May 8, but Universal moved it to October 9 — planting it squarely in the strongest stretch of the year for horror movies, just weeks before Halloween.
Chastain's horror pedigree
Chastain is no stranger to the genre. Her first major horror outing, 2013's Mama, opened to $28.4 million domestically — a bigger debut than Other Mommy is tracking. Her second, 2019's IT: Chapter Two, exploded with a $91 million opening weekend. On that yardstick, Other Mommy's debut would be the smallest opening of her three horror films — but it would also be by far the cheapest to produce, which changes the math entirely.
There is also the matter of the trailer. Other Mommy's unsettling teaser played in front of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey in July, exposing it to enormous premium-format audiences, and the trailer went viral online, generating the kind of organic buzz that studios cannot buy.
A friendly rivalry at the box office
The weekend's other major new release, Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning, is projected to earn only $6 million to $8 million in its North American debut — a soft start for the follow-up to Sorkin's acclaimed 2010 film The Social Network. Jeremy Strong plays Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the film, taking over the role from Jesse Eisenberg, with Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White also in the cast.
Chastain has discussed the head-to-head matchup with The Hollywood Reporter, framing it as a friendly contest: she and Sorkin are friends, and both films landing on the same weekend has given industry watchers a classic counter-programming showdown. So far, the scares are winning over the courtroom drama.
Why horror keeps winning in 2026
Other Mommy's opening caps what has been a banner year for horror at the box office. Earlier 2026 releases, including Obsession and Backrooms, made the genre one of the most reliable success stories of the year. Audiences in the weeks leading up to Halloween reliably turn out for scary movies, and studios have learned to schedule accordingly.
The economics explain the boom. Other Mommy cost roughly $18 million — pocket change by blockbuster standards — and was always going to turn a profit on a $20 million-plus opening. That is the Blumhouse model that James Wan has perfected: keep budgets low, marketing sharp, and let even a modest hit print money.
The open question is what the D+ CinemaScore means for the film's legs. Horror fans are famously forgiving of divisive reviews — and harsh audience polls have not stopped similar films from legging out through Halloween in past years. But a D+ suggests this one may burn bright and fast.
For Chastain, meanwhile, the weekend is a vindication of a different kind. At a moment when mid-budget original films are supposed to be dead at the multiplex, she has headlined a cheaply made, R-rated horror movie with no franchise behind it to the top of the box office. Whatever audiences thought of the final cut, they showed up — and in 2026, showing up is half the battle.
Sources: Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times, The New York Post, Global Box Office and AsiaOne News, reported October 9–10, 2026.