‘The Front Room’ Review: A Wasted Brandy Can't Save Baby Eggers Bros. Crappy Hagsploitation Horror
An A24 and Brandy collaboration is a recipe that only my deepest subconscious could whip up. To quote that Ne-Yo song, it's the best thing I never knew I needed. Be careful what you wish for though because, while Brandy and Kathryn Hunter shine, Robert Eggers' baby bros (Sam and Max Eggers) first foray into directing is a basic Get Out clone, if it were called Get Out of My House.
Image copyright (©) Courtesy of A24
R: Language, some violent/disturbing content, brief sexuality and nudity
Runtime: 1 Hr and 34 Minutes
Production Companies: Two & Two Pictures, 2AM
Distributor: A24
Directors: Max Eggers, Sam Eggers
Writers: Max Eggersm Sam Eggers
Cast: Brandy, Andrew Burnap, Neal Huff, Kathryn Hunter
Release Date: September 6, 2024
Belinda (Brandy Norwood) and her husband Norman (Andrew Burnap) are expecting a baby but are struggling to pay off their mortgage for their new home. Belinda’s job as a professor at a university screwed her over to the extent that she quit her job. Norman is busting his balls to land a better position at his law firm. When Norman’s dad passes away, his widowed bible-touting, southern-accented stepmother Solange (Kathryn Hunter) offers to pay off the couple’s mortgage as long as they let her live with them. Norman, traumatized by Solange’s religious habits during his childhood – he had to watch VeggieTales because she deemed Nick Jr. ungodly – refuses, but Belinda is all for it. Those unheeded warnings bite her in the ass when Solange moves in, immediately imposing her conservative ways on the family. As Belinda uncovers daunting secrets about her familial house guest and has to adhere to her constant old lady issues such as IBS, her patience wears thin, and the house stops feeling like a home.
Kathryn Hunter never needs to go to a deli to buy meat, because she provides all the ham here. Hunter's performance is the pillar that holds The Front Room together. Armed with a southern drawl so thick you'll need to attend an open caption screening and an unanticipated comedic soul, Hunter skillfully chews up the scenery like it’s tobacco. Solange possesses a remarkable amount of forcefulness, not necessarily an evil ghastly creature as the trailers suggested, but rather an elderly hag who only operates on being either comical or gross. No in-between. Even if the writers/filmmakers didn't intend to permit campiness, Hunter's saucy delivery lights the fire and roasts the marshmallows.
Brandy. Nothing else needs to be said. It's Brandy. She's the reason anyone would be interested in seeing The Front Room. Despite the material not utilizing her talents to their full potential, as Belinda, Brandy exudes boundless patience and slow-burning aggression in a believable and cathartic fashion.
The Front Room is fairly short. Though leaving so much to be desired from the script, the Egger Brothers' direction of their cast, with the very talented Brandy and Hunter going at each other's throats like the Looney Tunes short "Baby Buggy Bunny," is entertaining enough to fuel the 90-minute pacing.
Robert Eggers' baby brothers got the company Nepo Baby card to do their first flick, and to their credit, they don't rip off their big brother.
That said, they don't do anything to establish their voices, in either the direction or screenplay departments. Their execution of the concept is so hollow, hitting all the beats of a hagsploitation flick while using scatological imagery as cheap shock value and being so unfathomably unconvincing that Belinda would put up with any of Solange's shit (no pun intended).
For most of the set-up, the Eggers brothers positioned Belinda to welcome Solange into their home, considering their financial struggles while disregarding Norman's warnings. Even when Solange starts to take over their home she says so many wild things to Belinda that it's frustrating how much she ignores it. The more her confederacy background comes into play, the more the film begins to suffer from white writer syndrome: two white guys try so hard to have a racial conversation by saying, "We saw Get Out once," and going above and beyond to make their sole Black character act so off-beat, you can't even suspend your disbelief to enjoy the camp. Although it differs from Antebellum’s brutal affair, instead of focusing on egregious Black violence and torture porn, it's a waste of Brandy's time and talent. And that itself is a sin.
The Front Room is a middling single-set thriller, stitching together components of better horror-thriller affairs. I should've read, "Will be written by two white dudes," when using that monkey's paw to conjure that A24 and Brandy collab.
Rating: 2/5 | 46%
