If you thought horror movies were running out of ways to make audiences leap from their seats in terror, Rob Savage might have a solution. The director of Other Mommy has estimated that his new horror thriller contains around 50 jump scares, a staggering number for an 80 minute flick. That works out to about one every 96 seconds, assuming you’re counting along in the theater.
But does Other Mommy really have the most jump scares in horror history? Not according to the current numbers tracked by Where’s the Jump?, a crowdsourced database dedicated to cataloging the moments horror movies use to startle their audiences.
The site’s all-time list currently puts 2013’s The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia at the top, with 32 tracked jump scares. That’s followed by Extraterrestrial (2014), with 30, while Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) and Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015) each have 29. Even Evil Dead II, Sam Raimi’s gleefully gruesome 1987 horror-comedy, makes the list with 27.
So if we’re going by the database’s existing tally, Other Mommy would have to deliver a lot of additional jolts to take the crown. Savage’s estimate of 50, which he made to Entertainment Weekly, would put it well ahead of the current leader, but there’s an important distinction between a director’s count and an independently tracked total. Where’s the Jump? has not listed Other Mommy among the films on its current all-time ranking, so there is no independently tracked total there confirming the new movie has broken the record.
New York Post’s Johnny Oleksinski claims he only counted 22 jump scares when he watched the movie. And that led him to the existential question, “If nobody jumps or is scared, what exactly is a jump scare?”
Savage has acknowledged that the number depends on how you define one, which complicates any attempt to turn the whole thing into an exact science. A sudden appearance, a loud noise, a quick visual jolt and a scene built around mounting dread can all affect an audience differently. Not every unsettling moment is necessarily a jump scare, and two people watching the same movie might not agree on every count.
That distinction matters for Other Mommy, which stars Jessica Chastain and is based on Josh Malerman’s novel Incidents Around the House. The story follows a young girl who encounters a frightening presence she calls Other Mommy, a supernatural figure that takes on the appearance of her mother. Savage’s film leans into that unnerving premise, mixing psychological tension with the kind of sudden shocks that can leave audiences bracing for the next one.
The movie with the most jump scares isn’t automatically the scariest horror film ever made. A jump scare is a specific tool, while fear can come from atmosphere, suspense, disturbing imagery or the dreadful anticipation of something that might happen. A movie can bombard viewers with sudden shocks without leaving a lasting impression, while another can get under their skin with far fewer.
The Science of Scare Project, which has used heart-rate monitoring in its own attempts to measure audience reactions to horror films, approaches the question from a different direction. Its results are not a jump-scare leaderboard, and physiological responses don’t settle which movie is objectively the scariest. They do illustrate that counting shocks and measuring fear are two very different exercises.
For now, The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia remains the leader on Where’s the Jump?‘s published list. Other Mommy may have a higher number if Savage’s estimate holds up under a consistent count, but that would need to be checked against the same criteria used for the other films.
Still, 50 jump scares in around 80 minutes is quite a promise. That’s a lot of opportunities for a anything on screen to suddenly try and knock your popcorn into the next row.
Whether Other Mommy has actually broken horror’s jump-scare record is another question. For now, the claim is scarier than the evidence. My personal take? No, Other Mommy only wishes it had a record number of jump scares. As I see it, the movie is barely scary at all, but it is quite funny.
