Jessica Chastain’s new horror film “Other Mommy” scared up the top spot at the North American box office over the weekend, pulling in an estimated $27.5 million despite reviews so harsh that critics and opening-night audiences alike seemed to agree on little else than that they didn’t like it.

The Universal Pictures release, produced under Blumhouse’s Atomic Monster banner on a reported budget of about $19 million, opened in 3,365 theaters and added another $17.69 million from 50 international markets for a global debut of roughly $45.2 million, according to data released by measurement firm Rentrak. Directed by Rob Savage and based on Josh Malerman’s novel “Incidents Around the House,” the film follows a young girl named Bela who forms an unsettling bond with a sinister entity that takes on the appearance of her mother, turning her home life increasingly dark and terrifying.

Audiences showed up anyway, even as critics tore the film apart. “Other Mommy” landed just an 18% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 57 reviews and a “D+” CinemaScore from opening-night moviegoers — one of the lower grades a wide release has posted this year. The crowd was split almost evenly by gender, with about two-thirds of ticket buyers between the ages of 18 and 34.

“No matter how you look at it, everybody turned out for it,” said Jim Orr, Universal’s head of domestic distribution, of the film’s opening weekend. Paul Dergarabedian, Rentrak’s senior media analyst, framed the result as proof that horror remains one of the box office’s most reliable draws regardless of critical reception. “You don’t always know what’s going to connect with audiences,” he said.

The rest of the top five told a quieter story. Amazon MGM’s psychological thriller “Verity,” starring Anne Hathaway, slid to second place with $11.5 million in its second weekend, down 64% from its debut, bringing its domestic total to $53.86 million. Sony’s “Resident Evil” held at third with $8.4 million in its fourth weekend, crossing $138.5 million domestically, while Brad Pitt’s survival thriller “Heart of the Beast” took fourth with $7.1 million. Rounding out the top five was Sony’s “The Social Reckoning,” Aaron Sorkin’s dramatization of a Facebook whistleblower’s leak to a Wall Street Journal reporter, starring Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong. That film opened to a soft $5.5 million on a reported $30 million budget, drawing mixed-to-negative reviews and a B- CinemaScore — a notably cooler reception than “The Social Network,” the film it invites comparison to, managed when it opened to more than $22 million back in 2010.

Industry trackers say the weekend fits a pattern that has defined much of 2026: horror films with modest budgets continuing to outperform starrier, more expensive dramas. The domestic box office crossed the $8 billion mark for the year on the preceding Friday, running more than 19% ahead of last year’s pace, though still roughly 8% behind pre-pandemic 2019 levels, according to Rentrak figures. For “Other Mommy,” a messy critical reception did nothing to dent its opening — and for Blumhouse, now riding its latest low-budget horror hit after “Backrooms” and “Obsession,” it is further proof that scares still sell, reviews be damned.

Sources: Associated Press, The Star