The Front Room
Written and directed Sam Eggers and Max Eggers
Starring: Brandy Norwood, Kathryn Hunter, Andrew Burnap
Rated R
Runtime: 1 hour 34 minutes
In theaters September 6

by Darian Davis, Staff Writer

Once a fledgling indie studio, A24 made a name for itself as the home of prestige horror to become the production behemoth it is today. That distinctive logo heralded the expectation that a horror film from the company wouldn’t just scare you for a few thrilling hours, it had the potential to haunt you for life. The first directorial effort from brothers Sam Eggers and Max Eggers lands squarely near the bottom of A24’s esteemed horror entries, rendering The Front Room an inconsistent m-e-s-s of a hagsploitation film with dreams of prestige.

The film starts off with some strong ideas. A theremin score sets the mood. A strange still life shot displays our three main players in a triptych mirror to harken the religious undertones. There’s even some surreal sequences, like a glowing baby uterus growing inside a clawfoot tub, and references to maternal Egyptian deities. And yet, the Eggers aren’t ever able to string these intriguing images into something coherent, haunting, or thought-provoking. I was left waiting for the scary, mind-bending shoe that never dropped.

Some folks will undoubtedly flock to theaters to witness Brandy’s return to the big screen and the genre. I wish I could say it’s a triumphant return, but I am just grateful the singular R&B talent continues her acting renaissance beyond kitschy tv movie fare. In the film, which is adapted from a short story, Brandy plays the newly pregnant Belinda, a wife and college professor whose world shifts when she becomes jobless and the will of her husband Norman’s (Andrew Burnap) dead father forces the couple to take in Norman’s ailing, estranged stepmother Solange (Kathryn Hunter).

There’s no one with physical acting chops quite like Kathryn Hunter. Seeing her shake and contort in The Tragedy of Macbeth, I wondered when I’d see her lend her unique talents to the horror genre. Fortunately The Front Room ends up being a showcase for Hunter, who gives her very best as Solange, a religious zealot intent on claiming her place as the family’s de facto matriarch. From her very first appearance on screen, it’s clear the Eggers can’t wait to let Hunter chew up the scenery, and frankly, neither can I. As soon as Solange rises from her seat and hobbles across the room with the aid of a cane in each hand, her southern draw and puckered grin gripped me immediately.

Solange’s first interaction is with Belinda (Brandy Norwood) and the showdown begins, though it’s mostly a one-sided affair. In a film that should offer more space for Norwood to make a bigger splash, the script really lets her down with very little character depth and doesn’t offer her enough showstopping moments to rival the size of Hunter’s performance. In one scene, the two face off on the definition of “racist”. While Belinda is frustrated but restrained as she tries to reason with Solange, Solange devolves into an infant-like fit tossing food and flatulating in the air. Not a fair fight at all. Andrew Burnap as Norman plays referee to the feuding women, but gives a performance that never rises above the demands of his character as an archetypal husband that is regrettably both emotionally impotent and dismissive.

Directors Max Eggers and Sam Eggers (twin brothers to older sibling director Robert Eggers) struggle with tone. Solange’s extreme incontinence in the film is played with a level of shock value that never rises to cultish gross-out delight, but also rings hollow as the Eggers try to make thematic parallels between Solange’s high level of maintenance with that of Belinda’s newborn daughter. This tonal waffling may be the Eggers tiptoeing around the contentious hagsploitation label, but it’s this lack of creative direction that ultimately leads to a poor representation of the elderly that doesn’t serve the film’s story.

The mood of the film tries to style itself after Rosemary’s Baby, considering the similar themes of maternity and religious cults, but even those moments don’t have the steam to be truly frightening. For example, Solange’s prayer colleagues intrude on Belinda as she arrives from the hospital with baby Laurie. Solange takes the baby and they “lay hands” on Belinda’s belly to heal the scar from her C-section. The chaos of prayer builds into a nearly terrifying moment that is betrayed when the people praying start flicking their tongues, looking wholly unserious. The scene displays the film’s overall missed opportunity to tell a larger story about Black maternity and mortality, and the struggles Black women face in feeling ignored by loved ones and in hospital settings, often at the risk of death.

Norwood and Hunter are enjoyable as feuding in-laws, with Hunter especially entertaining in a feast of a role, but The Front Room is constantly flipping between camp and angst, and it’d be a better film if it decided on one or the other.