‘Mama Again’ Scares Up $27.5M With Better Marketing Than the Film. Now What?
A viral trailer attached to Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” turned Jessica Chastain into a popular scary meme months before Blumhouse’s latest film earned a D+ CinemaScore in theaters.
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Christopher Nolan probably didn't expect "Odyssey" to help launch one of the most successful horror marketing campaigns of the year. But when Universal tied the first trailer for "The Other Mom" to Nolan's take on Homer's saga in July, audiences were in for a nasty surprise.
Starring Jessica Chastain as a monstrous motherly creature with a knack for appearing where she shouldn't, the trailer for "Other Mommy" terrified many Nolan fans and quickly became a genre meme of its own. (Suffice it to say, you almost couldn't visit digital horror spaces this summer without seeing Chastain's mutated neck poking out from under a table). Distributors, Cross $500,000
Three months later, the marketing campaign has officially paid off. "The Other Mom," Rob Savage's adaptation of Josh Mallerman's 2024 horror novel "Incidents Around the House," has taken the top spot at the box office with a domestic haul of $27.5 million.
With another $17.7 million overseas, the Blumhouse-Atomic Monster production has earned $45.2 million worldwide. It's an impressive debut for a film that was largely hated by critics. Like, I really, really hate it. Currently, Another Mom holds an abysmal 18% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and IndieWire gave the film a rather generous C+. Audiences have not been much kinder.
Just 47 percent of verified moviegoers on Rotten Tomatoes gave "The Other Mom" a positive rating, while Letterboxd users gave it a disappointing 2.3 out of 5 stars. It also had a poor D+ CinemaScore over the weekend. For comparison, that's the lowest score recorded by the audience polling service since Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis in September 2024.
Universal successfully sold on the promise of a terrifying and emotional horror experience starring an Oscar-winning actress. And while the finished film has its defenders, "The Other Mom" has generated almost as much enthusiasm as its hype.
That's not necessarily a problem for a studio celebrating box office success, but it complicates the question of how long that success can last. After months of making The Other Mom the scariest movie of the year, what happens when the commercials are the best part?
The trailer for "The Other Mom" worked because audiences didn't need to know anything about the movie to actually be scared by its promo clip. The first preview opens with an innocent domestic exchange between a mother and daughter that suddenly turns into something deeply disturbing. It's a remarkably simple and effective piece of filmmaking, anchored in a convincing balance of tenderness and terror that Savage's feature struggles to maintain.
It was very clever to put this preview before "Odyssey". Instead of limiting the "Other Mom" campaign to genre fans already looking for horror thrillers, Universal introduced its new villain to a massive audience that didn't necessarily sign up to meet her. And Nolan's epic had some spectacular monsters of its own. In his review, David Ehrlich of IndieWire praised the film's terrifying Cyclops sequence as a showcase for the filmmaker's "latent skill" as a horror director.
Between the head-gnawing giant and a preview of Chastain's heart-stealing shrink, moviegoers had a double whammy. The resulting reactions became their own publicity machine, which translated into both headlines covering audience reactions and measurable interest from "other moms."
Boxoffice Pro reported that "The Odyssey" made a significant dent in its tracking after the trailer was placed, while broader industry projections rose to $35 million before cooling off in late summer. The publication ultimately predicted $17 million to $22 million, which the film easily exceeded.
The studio didn't settle for a viral scare either. Subsequent promotional materials continued to emphasize Chastain's quirky reactionary role, with an eye-catching outdoor advertising campaign highlighting the character's distressed expression and making her film recognizable at a glance.
It's a subtle and simple strategy, really. Take an Academy Award winner, make her look like something out of a nightmare, and let people imagine the possibilities for you. In contrast to the more elaborate and complex mythology of Savage's completed project, the "Other Mom" ads needed almost no explanation to work.
Unlike some literary adaptations, the film also didn't require you to know much about Mahlermann's source novel or Savage's previous work as a horror director. That familiarity certainly worked in the film's favor among some viewers, especially those invested in its maximalist approach to family melodramas and semi-surreal scares.
That said, Universal's campaign seemed less interested in cultivating that audience than in reaching people who would react strongly to a two-minute trailer. Instead of selling "The Other Mom" on her creative pedigree, the studio gave her the first take.
Of course, previews are meant to make future releases look good. What's more unusual is how well "The Other Mom" has maintained this impact without much help from critical institutions. Press screenings were scheduled unusually close to the release (IndyWire didn't show the film until Thursday night, less than 24 hours before the film opened nationwide), leaving little time for reviews to influence the social conversation before audiences started buying tickets.
And despite some viewers sincerely connecting with Chastain's performance and Savage's sensitive approach to the material, the publicity conversation surrounding "The Other Mom" seems to have been much more limited than its viral ad campaign. Arguably, this is a missed opportunity for both entertainment journalists and the artists behind the film, whose storytelling ambitions deserve attention beyond their most marketable fears. In prioritizing the immediate impact of its advertising, Universal may have boosted "The Other Mom" as a financial event, but it undermined it as a cultural event.
The portrayal of "The Other Mom" was arguably more successful than the surrounding story, even in the entirety of Savage's film. And while there's nothing inherently wrong with this marketing approach, how the film performs next weekend will tell us a lot about what the experience promised to audiences doesn't support for the people who see it.
Some moviegoers have already made this distinction themselves. As one Letterboxd user put it, "The surprise drop of the first trailer was much scarier and better than the actual movie." Other critics have echoed this sentiment, with some specifically lamenting that the film's most effective scare was spoiled months before they saw it. In this sense, "The Other Mom" may be a victim of its own promotional success
And Blumhouse definitely knows the difference between a horror movie and a so-called "scary" movie. This horror powerhouse has spent years building major Hollywood releases around locations that practically advertise themselves. Look at the killer pool in Night Swim or the evil teddy bear in Fantasy. Both titles launched in 2024 with easy-to-read monsters that were met with warm receptions, however - but their box office performances tell slightly different stories.
"Night Swim" opened with $11.8 million domestically and fell 61 percent in its second week, grossing just $4.6 million. Meanwhile, "Imaginary" debuted domestically with $9.9 million and fared significantly better, dropping nearly 44 percent to $5.6 million. Neither release became a theatrical phenomenon, but each grossed more than $40 million worldwide—showing that even mediocre horror films can have significant returns when their premise is compelling enough.
At the opposite end of the Blumhouse spectrum is "M3GAN," the killer doll whose online popularity has pushed its 2023 debut to $30.4 million domestically. Unlike "Night Swim" and "Imagination," the original "M3GAN" delivered much of the ludicrous fun that its trailer promised. As a result, it stayed remarkably strong in its second weekend, dropping only 40% to $18.3 million. It ended up grossing over $180 million worldwide.
Importantly, "M3GAN" also had critics on its side, earning a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This figure is far from the 18% currently held by "other moms". Both films had the ingredients to turn their title characters into memes and their theatrical debuts into events, but Universal was able to turn the genuine and widespread love of M3GAN into fuel for a celebratory marketing spectacle that grew more entertaining as it grew. That same victory lap for Chastain's meandering antagonist seems unlikely, and in exceptionally divisive circumstances, even achieving that risk seems complacent.
However, "Other Mom" has already done some big things for Blumhouse-Atomic Monster. Its $27.5 million domestic debut is the company's biggest domestic opening of 2026 so far — surpassing "Obsession" (which grew as a word-of-mouth triumph over time) and even the latest installment of "Insidious." Combined with a strong international start, it's a promising financial position for an original horror film with a production budget of $19 million, before marketing costs.
Horror audiences are also notoriously unpredictable, and a woeful CinemaScore doesn't automatically guarantee an equally grim show. Next weekend should provide a clearer picture of whether Universal has created another enduring genre attraction or whether it's convinced millions to tune in for an incredibly good commercial.
For Blumhouse, there's a bigger question of trust. The company's reputation was built in part on convincing audiences to take a chance on cheap, surprise horror outings—often with little more than a compelling premise to go on. This goodwill is valuable, but not inexhaustible. And while a great trailer can convince someone to buy a ticket once, convincing them to take that chance again is a whole other story.