While Hollywood star Jessica Chastain took a while to warm to horror movies, the actor has starred in her fair share of releases in the genre. From the critically acclaimed drama Molly’s Game to the recent Netflix release The Good Nurse, Chastain has had an impressive screen career. Unusually, the actor’s contributions to horror movies began later in her oeuvre, although Chastain has still racked up an impressive set of credits in the genre.
All told, Chastain has starred in four horror movies from 2011’s Take Shelter. The actor followed that disquieting psychological thriller with 2013’s Mama, a more straightforward horror movie with a dark fairytale feel. After, Chastain worked with legendary director Guillermo del Toro on 2015’s gothic romance Crimson Peak. Most recently, Chastain was reunited with Mama director Andy Muschietti to kill the iconic Stephen King villain Pennywise in 2019’s sequel IT: Chapter 2. While Chastain’s horror outings run the gamut of the genre’s themes and tones, the four movies also differ in critical reception.
Mama
Mama is an ambitious, interesting effort from Muschietti. A strange mixture of dark domestic drama, outright supernatural horror, and offbeat fairy tale elements, Mama tells the story of a pair of feral children who are rescued from a cabin in the woods, only for the duo to bring the spirit of a dearly departed maternal figure with them to their new home. While Mama was a financially successful horror upon its release, its tonal inconsistency is tough to ignore, and the mixture of gruesome moments and saccharine family drama makes the movie’s intended audience tough to ascertain.
The scenes where Chastain’s heroine attempts to parent the two girls give Mama a sentimental feel, but this clashes disastrously with the creepy horror of later scenes. Mama also never settles on how malevolent or misjudged its titular villain is and, as such, it is tough to work out whether to fear or pity her. While Muschietti’s later work features some masterful balancing of tone, Mama proved the director still had some way to go. Before bringing Pennywise to life, the helmer struggled to make his first horror antagonist worth watching in a movie that is mostly saved by Chastain’s performance.
Crimson Peak
Del Toro’s penchant for gothic horror fails the veteran director in Crimson Peak, a muddled effort that fell victim to misleading advertising. While Crimson Peak’s trailers promised a terrifying horror movie, what viewers got was a dark, moody romance dripping with atmosphere. However, even for audiences expecting dark romance, Crimson Peak remains something of a misfire. There are plenty of clever twists, and Chastain is superb in her most venomous role yet, but Crimson Peak never settles on a tone, bouncing between melodrama and haunted house horror without ever making much of an impact in either mode despite an impressive cast.
IT: Chapter 2
Chastain also elevates IT: Chapter 2, a tonally inconsistent sequel that fails to live up to the successes of its 2017 predecessor. IT: Chapter 2 does feature some great character work between Chastain’s Beverly and the rest of the Losers Club, with Bill Hader’s scene-stealing turn as Richie Tozier being the standout of the sequel. However, IT: Chapter 2 falters where IT excelled as the sequel’s scary scenes fail to muster more than mild surprise. While IT: Chapter 2 has plenty of gross-out gags and gore, the sequel is never truly scary and Pennywise becomes a less threatening figure once his foes are fully grown adults.
Take Shelter
Like Willem Dafoe’s best horror movie, Chastain’s strongest contribution to the genre is as much a tense psychological thriller as it is an outright horror movie. Take Shelter is a deeply unsettling tale of a seemingly normal man going to disturbing lengths to save his family from a threat that only he can see coming. Is there really a Biblical apocalypse that he needs to save his wife and children from? Or has he lost his mind and is he dangerously close to dragging his family into his madness? That unanswered question is what makes the story of Michael Shannon’s Curtis and his increasingly worried family so compelling, and the fact that it is left a mystery by the ambiguous ending of Take Shelter is what makes the movie the best Jessica Chastain horror offering yet.
