2024 | rated R | starring Brandy Norwood, Kathryn Hunter, Andrew Burnap | directed by Max and Sam Eggers | 1h 34m | 1 out of 5 stars |
Recently unemployed and pregnant, Belinda (Brandy Norwood) and her husband Norman (Andrew Burnap) find their lives turned upside down when Norman’s father dies, and he takes custody of his elderly wicked stepmother, Solonge (Kathryn Hunter).
One of the things I try to do is meet the movie at what it’s going for, not what I want it to be. So, for example, if I look at The Front Room with an A24 logo on the front of it centered around a cackling lady who is cruel to everyone around her for no reason, I might think there is some sort of supernatural twist at play here where star Brandy confronts her own mortality in a demonic third act twist that’s half metaphor, half thriller. Instead, I’m baffled as to what this movie is even trying to go for. The Front Room is so incompetent all around that it feels like a parody of the very thriller it is trying to be. II almost can’t be categorized into a genre, because it’s so ineffective at doing anything.
The film, and all of its issues, center around the character of Solonge as our villain, how she’s written, how she’s portrayed and what the movie wants to do with her. Introduced to us wearing a full black vail at her husband’s funeral that is pulled off and revealed in the way another might reveal its monster in the final act, Solonge is part Disney wicked stepmother and part every tired old lady troupe you can imagine. She’s hyper-religious, a devout follower of the one religion Hollywood is allowed to make fun of and, of course, she’s racist so that she can play the strawman to Brandy, making archaic, offensive statements so that our hero can get easy victories in. Solonge’s racism is as cartoonishly portrayed as it was in the 2021 living-meme joke movie Karen. Except here, instead of a confederate flag soap dispenser, Solonge has a paper certificate from the confederacy that she keeps propped up so Brandy can see it every day.
The religious angle is handled with equal what-is-this caricature. There is a scene where Belinda comes home from having her baby and Solonge’s prayer group puts hands on her and starts immediately speaking in tongues that is played like a dream sequence she is about to wake up from. No, it’s just directors Max and Sam Eggers’ working through their own religiophobia. In fact, the entire birth sequence plays out like a nightmare. Belinda watches as shadows on the wall show intestines pulled out of her belly and she comes home with a jagged C-section scar like she was operated on by Dr. Frankenstein and nobody ever comments on any of this.
The other problem is with Kathryn Hunter’s performance, which is something I hate to do because Hunter is doing exactly what the filmmakers and the script is calling for her to do, but nothing about it works. Solonge is such a tiny, wiry figure and Hunter gives her a weird performance that can only be describe as physical comedy (bordering on slapstick). It’s so strange that she comes off like a special effect herself at times. You watch this movie and wonder if this person is real or a puppet or an actor under old makeup or something. How seriously are we supposed to take this tiny frail character as a threat when she can barely see over the dinner table and the script is leaning into fart and poop content as our villain decides to weaponize her own incontinence. Yes, a large portion of The Front Room is devoted to showing us actual sh*t.
Which takes us to the other players in this single-location would-be thriller. Norman is almost hilariously useless as the husband. Overcome with white guilt he is more offended than Belinda by Solonge’s racism to the point of paralysis. The movie strains in unnatural ways to keep Belinda and Norman trapped in their own house and being victimized by this woman. We’re supposed to think that the one-line throwaway that she paid for their house is enough to keep them from just dropping the woman off in a home and solve all their problems. The conflict escalates unnaturally by our protagonists’ own lack of agency to an ending that is appalling, both in concept and execution as some twist we’re supposed to be shocked out of our seats by.
The movie walks a surreal line in the war between Solonge and Belinda by never making Solonge too evil. Without being given any at all reason for why Solonge behaves in the insane, manipulative, easily shut down ways that she does, a lot of what this comes down to is a demonization of the elderly. And that’s a problem because leaning into her frailty (like seeing her in the bathtub) elicits sympathy from the audience. We will all get old, we will all lose control of our aging bodies in some way, we will all watch as things we believe will fall out of fashion or become inappropriate. Sometimes Solonge acts like she’s supernaturally possessed by a demon, sometimes she acts like she’s just enjoying driving Belinda mad, sometimes she acts like she’s trying to get the attention of her stepson in an Orphan kind of way, but the movie makes it clear she hates him too so that also doesn’t make sense.
That a single-location, three-handed thriller like this was directed by two people is baffling to me. That those two people are the brothers of mega-talent director Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman, and this year’s masterpiece Nosferatu) is even more baffling. That 90s music and TV star Brandy doesn’t have a bigger movie career – and that this was the project that brought her back is also a headscratcher. I hated every second of The Front Room. It’s nonsensical, it’s frustrating and it’s not the least bit tense or scary. It’s tortuous to watch. You might get secondhand embarrassment for Brandy, Hunter and everyone involved in the production. If you thought The Marvels was the worst movie you’ve seen, this is worse. If you thought Madam Web was the worst movie out there, this is worse. It’s the worst movie I’ve seen in quite a while.