The Front Room

Respect thy elders. Honorable wisdom – unless you’re Belinda (Norwood), who foolishly ignores her husband (Burnap) when he begs her not to let his recently-widowed stepmother, Solange (Hunter), move in with them. Belinda’s act of kindness opens the door to a slow-moving home invasion, as the seemingly decrepit old woman infests their home with her evangelical malevolence.

As seems to happen with any obtuse or upsetting film today, The Front Room is being referred to as a psychological horror. In reality, its precursors are theatrical and not cinematic. True, the original story by The Woman in Black author Susan Hill for her 2016 anthology The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories was an exercise in contemporary Gothic, replete with hauntings and spectral menace. However, writer/directors Max and Sam Eggers have stripped away all bar a low, rumbling trace of the paranormal and reengineered the story as a pitch-black and viciously acid suburban comedy reminiscent of British playwrights Beckett, Orton, and Pinter.

Yet while the story form is undoubtedly British, other changes they wrought make this a profoundly American narrative, most especially on issues of race, religion, and motherhood. What makes The Front Room universal is that it’s ultimately about power, about who runs the house – a pregnant Black academic who bores her students to tears through lectures about the Mother Goddess, or a fragile old lady who babbles in tongues when she’s not hacking hideous, bilious loogies into her silk handkerchief as she playacts at infirmity?

Such queasy moments are the work of the inimitable Hunter. When Joel Coen cast her as the three witches in The Tragedy of Macbeth it was as little more than a self-propelled prop, an elaborate piece of staging as he tried and failed to emulate Orson Welles. By contrast, the Eggers brothers provide a platform for her as one of the leading physical performers of this era, and relish capturing every nimble cavort and every carefully planned stumble. At each manipulative victory over her daughter-in-law, she deploys a malevolent, puckish grin that is both hilarious and chilling. It’s a knowing wink intended for Belinda but aimed at the audience, an intoxicating reminder that we’re watching a master con artist at work. From the instant she first clatters towards Belinda on a pair of canes, like some freakish, distorted, four-legged spider, she’s a presence. But once those mischievous eyes reveal their signature twinkle, she’s a glutton, swallowing up Belinda and Norman. Her deceptiveness – hidden behind and yet confessed to by that smile – makes everything about her unreliable. Is she really infirm, incontinent, religious, racist, or senile? Or is she just an awful, manipulative old woman who relishes having everyone run around for her? The way Hunter plays her, you’re never quite sure if she’ll shatter into a thousand feces-covered shards or pirouette off into the sunset. She’s as captivating as she is stomach-churning.

If The Front Room fumbles its themes at all, it’s in occasional glimpses of Solange that have a bitter tang of ageism to them. Those moments feel like easy, lazy sight gags compared to the more nuanced and rewarding narrative conceit of Solange weaponizing her age. Every time she screams “I’m an m-e-s-s” the weak of stomach may want to avert their eyes as she uses her incontinence as a power play. The Eggers do not blanch at any of this, but it’s not just tacky gerontophobic exploitation, as in M. Night Shyamalan’s mean-spirited shocker The Visit. Instead, it’s fuel for a final clash that’s sweeter and grittier than a candy dug out of a lint-lined handbag.