Ahead of our screening of A24’s “elevated” horror The Front Room, a promo featuring R&B star and actress Brandy Norwood encouraged the crowd to go against the rules and be loud when reacting to the film. She’s encouraging audiences to do that thing that can make really outlandish genre flicks fun, which is to shout at the screen, to joke, to have a shared group B-movie experience. Fair play to A24 for admitting upfront that the movie they are giving us is, for all of its art house trappings and creative talent, just a campy horror about how gross and smelly old folks are.
Entering into The Front Room knowing what you’re in for goes a long way, because the film can’t be enjoyed with higher expectations. Brandy, in her first significant horror role since 1997’s I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, stars as Belinda, a very-pregnant anthropology teacher who endures a bunch of bullshit at work, then endures more bullshit from her weak-kneed public defender husband Norman (Andrew Burnap, effectively dull), a boring lame who practically shivers out of his shoes when he’s contacted by his stepmother Solange (Kathryn Hunter), a domineering religious nut who barrels her way into their brand new home.
Norman is inconsequential to most of this. He’s bland and pathetic, actually, which is sort of the point. It’s the relationship between Belinda and Solange that matters. When we first meet the latter, shrouded in dark robes at her late husband’s funeral, she looks like a demon emerged from the bowels of Middle-Earth. Uncovered, she’s no less a twisted-looking figure, but at least presents as someone who longs for a better relationship with her estranged stepson and his wife. Belinda, willing to give her a shot, happily accepts when Solange offers to pay off the house…with the caveat that she gets to live there with them. Immediately, she begins wrecking shop all over the place; tossing aside the nursery to become her own bedroom, dismissing Belinda’s attempts at dinner, and worst, she’s also a bit racist. Okay, maybe the worst thing is that her walking cane pounds against the wooden floor like a jackhammer. Her footsteps carry the ominous boom of thunder.
Directors Max and Sam Eggers, brothers to The Witch and The Lighthouse director Robert Eggers, encourage our disgust at the geriatric physical form at every turn. They’re quite good at it, too. Solange’s body is an awkward thing of jagged bones and wrinkled skin. As Belinda gives birth by a difficult C-section, suddenly Solange becomes extremely needy and…well, flatulent. She farts, shits herself, pisses herself, can’t get out of her chair, can’t walk (or can she?), won’t eat, did I mention she farts? Not like a puff from a perfume bottle but like somebody pulled a ripcord. It’s disgusting. If you’ve got a weak stomach for body fluids and other gnarly body functions, watch out. And Brandy wants us in that theater groaning our disgust. Okay, Moesha, you’ve got it.
The Front Room can be fun in that way. It plays to our base instincts to be grossed-out and to despise our in-laws. And Solange makes for an easily despicable figure. She’s got the sleazy charm of a racist madam from the Antebellum South, delivering backhanded compliments and hard truths meant to keep uppity folks in their place. But she’s also a cult freak in the vein of Rosemary’s Baby, one of many films this movie references but fails to really capitalize on. Maybe for Black people it’s a bit more triggering to see preggo Belinda practically molested by Solange and a bunch of her white religious weirdo friends who appear to have sinister intentions for that child she’s carrying.
Or do they? One of the failings of The Front Room is that it isn’t really the psychological game of cat-and-mouse between mother and mother-in-law that would’ve been interesting to watch unfold. Belinda’s spirituality against Solange’s Christian fanaticism; a literal Daughter of the Confederacy dealing with her son’s interracial marriage; a struggling mother caring for a newborn but spends most of her day cleaning up the shit of an incontinent adult; these dynamics could’ve been explored to much greater effect. Instead, The Front Room uses them for cheap laughs and to test our gag reflexes. If that’s all you’re buying a ticket for, then this film manages to deliver them in spades. And I’ll admit, my headspace is usually right for this sort of exploitative, entertaining nonsense. If I believed in the “guilty pleasure” movie I would say this is one. Crowds will eat this up and feel terrible afterwards for enjoying it as much as they did. Just don’t take your mother-in-law or grandma with you.
The Front Room is open in theaters now.
