Cast: Brandy Norwood, Andrew Burnap, Kathryn Hunter
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Directors: Max and Sam Eggers
In Irish Cinemas: 25th October 2024
The Front Room, the latest horror-comedy by filmmakers Max and Sam Eggers, in collaboration with A24, offers a promising concept and an enthusiastic cast but ultimately needs to deliver on its potential. While it teases the eerie and the absurd, blending surreal elements with moments of visual creativity, the film struggles to land its scares or laughs fully. It leans into the quirky, offbeat style typical of indie horror yet feels too broad and accessible to truly capture the more nuanced, art-house sensibility it hints at. Finding that sweet spot between unsettling horror and sharp humour is undoubtedly possible—shows like Atlanta have nailed the balance that The Front Room seems to strive for. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t quite pull it off. Despite its strengths, it fails to provoke genuine fear or deep belly laughs, leaving the viewer with an intriguing but somewhat hollow experience. While it may spark exciting discussions, one inevitable question will be: “Why doesn’t it fully live up to its potential?”
Brandy Norwood takes on the role of Belinda, a driven anthropology professor grappling with the fear that she may be stuck in a dead-end career. Despite her passion for her work, she remains an underappreciated adjunct professor with no clear path to tenure. Adding to the pressure, she’s expecting her first child, which only amplifies her anxiety about the future. Frustrated by being repeatedly overlooked for promotions and opportunities, Belinda boldly resigns, leaving her family to rely solely on her husband Norman’s income. Norman, played by Andrew Burnap, works as a public defender and is chasing a promotion that could finally offer them the financial security they desperately need. With only Norman’s modest paycheck to support them, the couple faces the grim reality of losing their home unless they take a drastic step: allowing Norman’s estranged and abusive stepmother, Solange, to move in. Portrayed by Kathryn Hunter, Solange is an eccentric and deeply religious woman whose fundamentalist Christian beliefs lead her to claim a unique, direct connection with God. She insists that this connection has granted her supernatural abilities. While living with such an overbearing and erratic presence is daunting enough, a darker possibility begins to haunt the family—what if Solange’s bizarre claims are accurate? What if her supposed divine powers aren’t just the ramblings of a troubled mind but evidence that she genuinely does have God on her side? As tensions rise in the household, the family must confront whether Solange is simply a delusional older woman or something far more dangerous.
Solange embodies a range of America’s most profound societal problems. She proudly claims her identity as a Daughter of the Confederacy, blind to the inherent racism tied to it. Her devout Christianity, on the surface, seems admirable, but her version is warped—exclusionary, self-serving, and far removed from the teachings of Christ himself. Perhaps her most defining trait is her refusal to relinquish power. As an older woman clinging to authority, she’s determined to dictate the terms under which the next generation may rise or ensure they don’t rise. Kathryn Hunter brings Solange to life with a fascinating combination of absurdity and real threat.
Her portrayal is outsized, almost on the comedic level of an Adam Sandler film, yet it often succeeds because Solange herself is larger-than-life. She’s a master of passive aggression, amplifying her physical and emotional vulnerability to keep others constantly on edge. Hunter enhances the character’s monstrous presence, aided by the film’s clever use of sound design—each tap of Solange’s cane echoes like a thunderclap—and by the over-the-top depiction of her body’s various fluids. “The Front Room” leans heavily into a mix of scatological humour and horror, often blending the two with uncomfortable effectiveness. While Hunter’s commanding performance is mesmerising, it somewhat overshadows Brandy Norwood, who plays the film’s protagonist, Belinda. This role offers Norwood, an accomplished pop star and sitcom actress, a substantial opportunity to showcase her range. Yet her more understated performance often gets drowned out by Hunter’s overpowering presence, making it difficult to fully appreciate Norwood’s work in contrast to the louder, more chaotic energy that Solange exudes.
The two lead performances in The Front Room feel like they belong to entirely different films: Brandy seems to inhabit a more conventional A24-style horror-thriller, grappling with layers of situational and generational trauma, while Hunter is in a broader, more exaggerated realm of slapstick or gross-out horror-comedy. The film’s struggle to balance these contrasting tones prevents either from fully taking root. While The Front Room brims with unsettling and comedic ideas, it lacks genuinely terrifying scenes or consistently funny. Instead, its most striking moments come from its grotesque yet visually rich dream sequences, which seem to aspire to the atmospheric surrealism of Robert Eggers, the celebrated A24 auteur. (Max Eggers, who co-wrote The Lighthouse with his brother Robert, is one of the filmmakers here, and a trace of that film’s eerie, psychosexual undercurrents is present.)
While the Eggers brothers may have been able to pull off one or even two of these tones, the attempt to juggle all three—horror, comedy, and the surreal—falls short. It’s easy to imagine at least three better versions of The Front Room that could be made from this same screenplay. After watching, it’s hard not to speculate what those films might have looked like. Critics often try to avoid judging a movie by what it could have been and instead focus on what it is, allowing the film itself to define the terms on which it should be appreciated. However, in this case, The Front Room provides a straightforward story, distinct perspective, and thematic intent, yet it never entirely signals how it wants the audience to engage with it. Should it be more comedic? More frightening? Should its approach be more abstract or symbolic? The answer to any of these could be “Yes,” but instead, the film falls into a grey area, never committing fully to any one direction. As a result, it leaves the audience with a sense of unfulfilled potential and the lingering feeling that the movie, as it stands, doesn’t quite hit the mark.
Overall: 5.5/10
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