THE FRONT ROOM - Mark Reviews Movies

The Front Room, A24

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 6, 2024

The tone of The Front Room indecisively rests somewhere between comedy and horror. If fraternal writers/directors Max and Sam Eggers know which mode they're ultimately aiming for, that remains a mystery in the end result.

It is funny, at least, in a demented way—a sort of comedy of manners about a pregnant woman inviting her seemingly innocent and frail stepmother-in-law into her home. The expectant mother's husband tells it to her straight before the idea of this relative stranger moving into the house is even broached.

Stepmom was a nightmare in general and specifically to him, on account of her extremely devout religious faith. He was expected to be as faithful as she was, and punishment for not convincing the woman included denial of food. Oh, there's also the fact that stepmom might not appreciate the fact that her white stepson married a Black woman.

The point is that Belinda (Brandy Norwood) was warned, and that warning goes unheeded or ignored after meeting her husband's stepmother Solange (Kathryn Hunter), who looks harmless and sounds as if she couldn't be happier to have a new daughter and to soon have a grandchild in her final years. In fact, Solange suggests her health is deteriorating to such an extent that even a single year might be an optimistic outlook.

How bad could she be, especially after she promises that her stepson Norman (Andrew Burnap) and Belinda will inherit the entirety of her and her recently departed husband's estate? Whatever amount that includes when she writes it down for the couple is all the convincing Belinda needs.

The very premise of this movie, adapted from a short story by Susan Hill, sounds like a sound comedic setup, and in Hunter's character, the material has an incredibly convincing comedic foil. Her performance is best described as a spectacle, because the actor inhabits this character fully—in body, in mind, in voice, in the sheer twisted joy Solange receives in being far more cunning than anyone would suspect. Belinda certainly doesn't spot it until it's too late. Who could think a woman who requires two canes to hobble about, speaks with such downhome frankness, and genuinely seems incapable of harming anyone or anything would be, as Norman made clear, such a nightmarish figure?

Maybe Hunter's performance is too good for the material surrounding her, because she's genuinely funny or unsettling or, somehow, both in every scene that features Solange. Her castmates, while fine enough for whatever movie they think they're in, certainly can't match the off-kilter energy of their co-star, but they shouldn't have to, either.

The problem is that Norwood and Burnap come across as if they're in far more subdued material, gradually becoming suspicious of Solange or falling into her little trap, while also dealing with or avoiding the assorted pressures of suddenly juggling so much in their house. Belinda starts having visions and dreams Solange overtaking her home and life, and such touches, apparently, are enough for the first-time filmmakers to believe they've made a horror tale. Those sections, as well as some serious stuff about parenthood and the couple losing a previous child, feel as removed as the actors from everything revolving around Solange.

Anyway, everything Norman predicts when he first tells Belinda about his stepmother comes to pass. Solange insists the family pray before meals, even though Norman lets her know this isn't that kind of house. She starts putting up religious iconography wherever she can, including over anthropology professor Belinda's statues of African goddesses. Even at her most vulnerable, the stepmother-in-law seems to have a plan, using incontinence—or the façade of it—to garner sympathy and make life miserable for Belinda.

Solange also doesn't take kindly to Belinda suggesting or saying she's racist, even though Solange keeps a certificate of Confederate authenticity and counters the accusation by pointing out that it was her cousin who was part of a racist terrorist organization. There might have been some legitimate tension here. Whether the Eggers brothers realize it or not, though, the sight of Solange having a temper tantrum while shouting that she's a "racist baby" wholly deflates the potential conflict of that scene. The whole of it is too weirdly funny—and intentionally so, with the gusto with which Hunter plays it—for us to take any of it seriously.

That leaves the biggest question of all: How much of this are we meant to take seriously? When its attention is on anxiety and trauma, The Front Room comes across as dreadfully sincere, and Belinda's visions certainly contain the rhythm and jump-scare punchlines of a horror movie. Those moments, though, are also entirely generic, either as drama or as horror, so maybe the appeal of looking at this as a comedy simply comes from how genuinely strange the scenes with Solange can be. They're funny, yes, but they are also distinct in a movie that otherwise doesn't do much except the familiar.

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