On Thursday, I warned that early audience reception for "Other Mommy" wasn't looking good and that a brutal second-weekend drop was coming, despite a potential $30M weekend. Now it's official: CinemaScore has handed Rob Savage's horror film a D+.
It's been a rough week at the movies. "Other Mommy" is one of three bad films opening this week. The other two are Aaron Sorkin's sanctimonious "The Social Reckoning," which at least got a "B-" CinemaScore, and Ben Affleck's baffling "Animals," which has some truly horrible scenes that made my jaw drop.
However, of the three, only "Other Mommy" has been rejected this loudly by the people who actually paid to see it. Opening-night audiences are usually the easiest crowd there is, because they're the ones who wanted to be there. When they hand out a D-anything, something has gone very wrong.
How rare is a D+? Very. Most movies get a CinemaScore of B or higher, because pollsters survey excited opening-night crowds. Grades of D+ or worse can go years without showing up. In 2024, the run of "Borderlands" (D+), "Megalopolis" (D+) and "Joker: Folie à Deux" (D) within just a couple of months was treated as a genuine anomaly. Even the dreaded F has gone to only 22 films since the company began polling moviegoers almost 50 years ago.
None of this should come as a shock to anyone reading this site. As I wrote, Universal never screened Rob Savage's film for U.S. press, and once most reviews landed on Friday, the film sat at a dismal 17% on Rotten Tomatoes. And when audiences finally saw it, the film went viral for all the wrong reasons, as people took to social media to mock what they had just watched.
The money, for now, is fine. Friday brought in $9M, not including $3.6M in Thursday previews. The film is now on track for a $30M opening weekend on 3,300+ screens, easily No. 1 over Sorkin's "The Social Reckoning," which is going to bomb hard with $4M.
And with a budget of just $18M, Universal and Blumhouse/Atomic Monster will profit even if the film collapses. That's their modus operandi: cheap budget, viral trailer, front-loaded opening. The reviews barely matter.
It's been a rough week at the movies. "Other Mommy" is one of three bad films opening this week. The other two are Aaron Sorkin's sanctimonious ‘Social Reckoning,’ and Ben Affleck's baffling "Animals.”