Can the writer of Bird Box get lightning to strike twice?
Genre: Horror
Premise: A young girl gets secret visits from a woman in her closet who calls herself “Other Mommy,” until the girl’s mother finds out and looks for ways to terminate the ghost.
About: Horror titans Blumhouse and Atomic Monster seem to be retooling this after their recent bomb of the movie where they oddly thought it was a good idea to turn female Chucky into a superhero. Incidents Around The House is most certainly a return to form for Jason Blum’s production company. It is simple, it is contained, it focuses on a freaky ass monster. The film will star Jessica Chastain as the mother. The screenplay adaptation will be written by Nathan Elston, who was one of the big staff writers on Succession. The book’s author, Josh Malerman, wrote the book, Bird Box, which is one of Netflix’s most watched films ever.
Writer: Josh Malerman
Details: about 370 pages
Before we get things rolling today, let’s ask the question a lot of you are dying to know. Would Incidents Around The House have made it into the Blood & Ink Showdown based on its logline alone?
The answer is…. no.
It would not.
It’s not a juicy enough concept.
Before everyone freaks out and says what’s the point of the Blood & Ink Showdown if you wouldn’t even accept a script that would’ve turned into a giant Hollywood movie, these questions are always more complicated than they first appear to be.
The reason this is getting made has nothing to do with its concept. It’s getting made because it comes from the author who created a giant hit movie for Netflix, in Birdbox. There is no time in your career when your ideas are less judged than when you’ve come out with a hit movie. You could write a movie about growing arugula in the Congo and the studios would all bid millions for it.
The Blood & Ink Showdown is attempting to capture Hollywood’s interest from nothing. We don’t have a hit movie we can rest on. So we have to win Hollywood over with a flashy strong concept.
Now, the bigger question, as it applies to today is, despite the small concept, is the story any good?
A young girl named Bela (I’m assuming she’s around 9 or 10) is being visited at night by a woman from her closet who has asked Bela to call her “Other Mommy.” This story is told through Bela’s point of view. And so every experience that occurs is seen through her eyes and ears.
When Other Mommy isn’t pestering her, Bela is fighting off concerns about her parents’ (Ursula and Russ) marriage. Ursula is staying out much later each night. She always comes home smelling like booze. And, as Bela puts it, her parents don’t “hold hands as much anymore.”
While watching her parents’ marriage deteriorate in real time, Other Mommy is becoming more aggressive. She doesn’t just want to hang out with Bela anymore. She wants permission to “go into Bela’s heart.” Bela doesn’t know what that means but she gets the sense that it’s bad and begins to pull away from Other Mommy.
One night, when Other Mommy tricks Bela into thinking she’s her real mom, she tells Bela about her deepest darkest secrets, namely that she lives her life for lust, that she’s slept with more men than she can count, that she doesn’t love Russ and is much more interested in other men. As this is happening, the bedroom light switches on and Bela’s real mom is standing in the doorway. She sees Other Mommy (who was impersonating her) and has a full-on meltdown.
Ursula quickly grabs Bela and they leave the house to stay with friends. Soon, Russ is with them, and the three are trying to figure out what to do about this. When they realize that Other Mommy can follow them wherever they go, and that Other Mommy plans to use Bela’s body to reincarnate herself, they gear up to take the monster on. If only they knew what they were up against.
There’s no doubt that Incidents nails its creepy-factor. The way Other Mommy slithers out of the closet each night to talk with Bella. The way her eyes are sometimes at the bottom or sides of her face. The way she manipulates her. The uncomfortable mystery behind her ongoing question: “Can I come into your heart?”
And I thought it was a genius move to tell the story through the point of view of a child. One of the harder things to do in any genre is to avoid being on-the-nose. But when you tell a story through the eyes of a child, their innocence gives you permission to be on-the-nose.
For example, Ursula and Russ’s marriage is deteriorating. In normal third-person perspective writing, you would have them get into a lot of fights, it would all be on the nose and, as a result, it would feel clumsy.
But here, with Bela observing, she can say the obvious things and they don’t feel obvious because they’re coming from the innocence of a child who is experiencing all of this for the first time. “Mommy and daddy don’t hold hands as much as they used to.” There are a lot of observations like that which all feel natural behind the perceptive eyes of Bela.
But Incidents Around The House suffers from too simplistic of a narrative. Not only is the antagonist simplistic but the whole setup is simplistic. The entire first half of the story, save for two scenes I think, takes place in their small little house.
And there’s not even a good reason for it. It’s established that Other Mommy can follow them anywhere. So it’s not like we need to stay at the house to get the scares.
I’m okay with narratives that keep things contained WHEN IT’S ORGANIC TO THE STORY. For example, in Alien, there’s nowhere to go. They’re in the middle of space. So they have to stay on this ship. But to spend 150 pages in a house that we don’t have to be in? Get us out more! Create some variety in the story. Variety isn’t just the spice of life. It’s the spice of storytelling.
With that said, you don’t want to focus *only* on the scares. Too many scares delivered too frequently will numb your reader. Effective horror builds towards each scare over several scenes (typically 3-6), delivers the payoff, then begins building toward the next one.
During these buildup phases, you develop character storylines that emotionally invest your audience. Incidents Around The House executed this well. I found myself genuinely curious about this deteriorating marriage. What was Ursula hiding? How devastating would her secrets prove to be? What would happen when Russ inevitably discovered the truth? The script clearly established Bela’s desperation to keep her parents together, which raised the emotional stakes considerably. All of this character work was genuinely compelling.
The problem arose in how these human elements connected—or failed to connect—with Other Mommy. Rather than weaving together cleverly, the two narrative threads often felt at odds. At times, the script seemed to position Other Mommy as some kind of shadow-version of Ursula, suggesting a psychological doubling. But pages later, Other Mommy would be presented as an entirely separate entity from the void, desperate to return to the living world.
This represents a common writing pitfall. The author develops the story’s connections to about 75% completion—just enough for readers to glimpse how elements might relate—but stops short of fully realizing those connections. That missing 25% of clarity leaves the entire narrative feeling frustratingly murky.
The end here, which I won’t spoil, is beyond murky. I have no idea what I’m supposed to feel and that’s the result of poor writing.
Which is why I can’t recommend Incidents Around The House. But, if you need a cheap quick scary read, you could do worse.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Incidents Around The House and Bird Box are the perfect two concepts to compare in regards to The Blood & Ink Showdown. One is very high concept and would’ve been one of the top entries in the competition. The other idea just isn’t big or unique enough and, as a result, is probably going to struggle at the box office. Never underestimate the power of a good concept. It’s like being the celebrity at the party. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get laid but it sure as hell increases your chances.
