Review: OTHER Might Be Scary, But It’s Going Nowhere

In terms of David Moreau's recent horror releases, what MadS is to Them (Ils), Other is to The Eye. MadS is one of my favorite horror films of 2024; Other won't even sniff my favorite horror films of 2025. Moreau and co-writer Jon Goldman have an idea for a "monster in the walls" home-invasion thriller that's held together with Scotch tape and a dream. It's a shambolic genre take on body shaming, motherhood gone wrong, and things that go bump in the night, but Moreau is hardly in control. Where that chaos imbues a propulsive allure to the always-in-motion MadS, Other crosses wires like a blindfolded bomb defuser on a solo mission.

Olga Kurylenko stars as Alice, who flees to mother Elena's (Jacqueline Ghaye) overly barricaded estate upon her untimely death. After arriving, she soaks in memories from her teenage years as a pageant queen—including her mother's cruel treatment. But, something isn't right. The VHS tapes of her in-home practice runs, which she tosses to the ground, are pieced into a spiraling statue; her belongings keep going missing. Might it have something to do with the entity crawling on all fours in the darkness that's hardly hidden from our sight? Yes … or, rather, duh.

Moreau isn't foreign to the art of a good scare. Other's cold open features a masked vlogger type jabbering about a local murder and a mantra about not letting ... something see your face. There's an eerie quality to the first-person footage that sets an ominous tone, which can also be said for shots where Alice can't sense the scrambling creature darting between shadows. An uncanny strangeness keeps us on high alert as Alice, unaware of pressing dangers, smokes pot and blasts The Donnas in her childhood bedroom. Moreau's in touch with his direction of Them, messing with foreground and background haunts while giving us small bursts of New French Extremity carryover.

Unfortunately, the narrative is a merciless mess. Moreau dares to capture us in a moment without giving us much background, but in doing so, leaves us grasping at clues that flutter away. It's not terribly tricky to decipher Alice's threats, and yet the pace of plotted milestones feels askew. Alice is a damsel in distress, surrounded by ambiguous reasoning—from the masked online investigator who keeps appearing to the incessant use of blurred or blocked faces. Other wants you only to see Alice's profile, her beauty, and to ignore the players around her because … well, a reason is given, but it doesn't excuse the horrendously dubbed lines by all supporting actors.

Kurylenko's performance isn't a failure, just the material she's given. Alice struggles to acknowledge her parental instincts and shows a range of emotions, whether anger resurfaces in response to her mother's "Psycho Stage Mom" insults or she's painfully reattaching torn skin flaps. As an actress, Kurylenko rolls with the punches—the problem is, few land. Nightmarish set pieces from better movies are stitched into a mismatched patchwork of styles that clash when viewed as a whole. Night vision cameras, barbed wire fences, and red herrings in ferocious animal form all try to spike tension, and yet Moreau doesn't seem to understand how everything fits.

Other is a bumbling, disappointing experience that wastes whatever highlights there are. Its examinations of parenthood and beauty standards are apparent, and yet they hold no weight. The scariest material is born from a place of shock and surprise, but there's no sustained fearfulness as momentum keeps crashing into brick walls. The Moreau behind MadS is lost in translation, much as the film's intentions are, once the end credits bring this mystifyingly unfinished experience to a close.

Movie Score: 2/5