A24‘s new horror film “The Front Room” is a wild ride even by the standards of the studio that earlier this year brought us “Maxxine” and “Love Lies Bleeding“; its tale of a young wife (Brandy Norwood) who finds herself locked in spiritual and physical combat with the ailing evil mother-in-law (Kathryn Hunter) who moves into her home veers back and forth between genres and tones with dazzling dexterity. At times a social realist drama about how practical necessity informs life-changing choices (this is every bit as much an economic horror film as the original “Amityville Horror”), at others a hallucinatory nightmare infused with outrageous dark comedy, “The Front Room” encompasses a wide range of emotional effects that don’t typically coexist in the same movie.
According to filmmaking twin brothers Max and Sam Eggers, the approach grew organically from their real life experiences as caretakers for their dying grandfather. “It was a very surreal experience,” Sam told IndieWire. “Every morning you’d wake up and you didn’t know what you would find when you’d open the door to his bedroom. Sometimes it was hilarious, sometimes it was scary and sad, sometimes it was all of those things at once.” The brothers also looked to other films for inspiration, particularly Robert Aldrich’s “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” “We were trying to harness that film’s sense where you don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Sam said, adding that he wanted the battle of wills between Norwood and Hunter to resemble that between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in “Jane.”
While “The Front Room” takes elements from the Eggers’ life experiences and movies like “Baby Jane” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” more than anything it plays like an adult fairy tale; with that in mind, it’s unsurprising that the brothers cast Norwood in the lead role, as she has not only horror pedigree (she starred in “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer”) but a famous stint as Cinderella on her resume. “We needed somebody who could go against the wickedest of wicked stepmothers, and who better to connect and root for than the OG?” Max said. “It was a very conscious choice, and luckily Brandy wanted to be challenged and was willing to go through what we asked of her.”
As strong as Norwood is as the tale’s beleaguered princess, what lifts “The Front Room” into the ranks of all-time great horror movies is Kathryn Hunter’s work as Solange, the wicked mother-in-law. It’s a role that requires its performer to walk a real tightrope between the relatable and the outrageous, and Hunter navigates the complex terrain flawlessly, giving a performance as horrifying and funny as Kathy Bates’ iconic turn in “Misery.” “We had difficulty casting that role because of what we were asking,” Sam said. “A lot of people said, ‘You want me to do what on camera?’ Somehow Kathryn understood our madness.”
She also understood the degree to which the film’s impact depended on horror revolving around bodily functions — “The Front Room” contains more feces, urine, and vomit than any other mainstream theatrical release in recent history, and Hunter embraced the Eggers’ “more is more” approach. “She was very upset when we had to scale back on the poop,” Sam said. “When we were rehearsing, she said, ‘I remember there was more poop in this,’ and we were like, ‘Sorry Kathryn, the studio made us take it out.’” The brothers insist, however, that the graphic fluids that drench the movie’s walls and fabrics were not merely for shock effect. “In terms of the reality of taking care of somebody in decline, this just scratches the surface,” Max said.
Another aspect of the film’s steadily increasing sense of dread comes from the visual style that the Eggers brothers formulated with cinematographer Ava Berkofsky, in which the presentation makes Norwood’s reliability as an identification figure enigmatic. Though we’re invited to share her point of view, there’s a constant fracturing of the image via mirrors and frames within frames that raise the possibility that there is no firm sense of reality in which the audience can ground themselves, and the mirroring extends to the blocking as well, with actors posed opposite each other in ways that subtly shift throughout the film as we’re invited to consider the fact that Norwood might be losing her grip on reality as she grows more and more exhausted.
The mirrors had an added practical benefit as well, given that most of “The Front Room” takes place in one house. “It was a way to open up the space,” Max said. “We found a way through that approach to not only keep it interesting for the audience, but to make sure we didn’t go crazy ourselves filming it. The mirrors helped give us ambiguity. Once we get to the end, there should be a big question mark. How much of this was real?”
An A24 release, “The Front Room” is now playing in theaters.
