Spoilers are going back to bed.

There’s nothing more frustrating than not finding a good horror movie to close out October. Yes, there has been quite a few throughout the year but I’ve been increasingly disappointed with the latest crop lately. I’ve been taking a few stabs (heh) but I’ve come up with nothing. This one, I’m afraid, is barely even watchable. I just need to write something once in a while, so if you indulge me… Let’s see if I can make reading about it worth your time, because watching it doesn’t seem like a sound investment.

(Credit: Shudder)

Other (2025) was directed by David Moreau who wrote it with Jon Goldman. Alice (Olga Kurylenko) receives news of the passing of her mother and must travel home to put her affairs in order. As she arrives to the secluded house, we learn her mother was not only a fan of security and isolation, she was also a really strict parent. This is enforced via Alice’s flashbacks of growing up as her mother would sign her up for beauty pageants, controlling every aspect of her life including what she could and could not eat and monitoring her weight.

Alice just wants to be done and go back home, but strange occurrences keep her from leaving… or from staying. There’s a presence in the house. We are witness to something animalistic scurrying around. The keys to the rental car go missing. As she goes outside, the door is closed behind her. We already know that it is whatever is crawling around, and although there’s allusions from her mother about a dog (literally with labels that read “the dog”) we already know we’re dealing with a creature of sorts. However if makes no sense to steal Alice’s car keys (which would imply staying) and lock her out of the house (which means it wants Alice gone).

Not to give it away in case you have figured it out, but if this creature does not know the outside world then it should have no clue what a car is. It’s obvious what we’re trying to aim for is freaking Alice out but at the same time not allow her to leave. Alice eventually has an encounter with an outsider, a kid that wears a mask that warns her, “don’t show your face.” The creature doesn’t like faces. It sees itself as ugly. It’s not deeper than that.

It feels like someone want to put seeds in the story to make it feel like a better one, but if it was meant that way, nothing about it feels connected. Yes, obviously Alice’s mother was the real monster, etc. There’s grief and trauma surrounding the strained relationship which lead to Alice becoming stranged with her mother. Perhaps there was something more interesting if we had witnessed the actual breaking point. Otherwise, all this elements seemed to be scattered without a proper payoff.

Not recommended. It has the usual tropes plus scary sounds at night and nightmares with memories of the past, but nothing seems to land in a solid fashion. Kurylenko does the best she can with the material she’s given, but it’s not much when we always seem to know more than she does. She’s been in better films, and this one doesn’t seem sure what it wants to say if anything at all. Not worth your time.

That will do for now.