What’s It About
Everything goes to hell for newly-pregnant Belinda(Brandy) after her mother-in-law(Kathryn Hunter) moves in. As the diabolical guest tries to get her claws on the child, Belinda must draw the line somewhere…
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
The mood of The Front Room indecisively sits somewhere between comedy and horror. It is funny, at least, in a demented way. A sort of comedy of manners about a pregnant woman inviting her seemingly innocent and frail stepmother-in-law into her home. The expectant mother’s husband tells her this before the idea of this relative stranger moving into the house is even broached. She was a nightmare in general and specifically to him because of her highly devout religious faith. He was expected to be as faithful as she was, and punishment for not convincing the woman included denial of food. Oh, there’s also the fact that stepmom might not appreciate the fact that her white stepson married a Black woman. Belinda (Brandy Norwood) is forewarned, and that warning goes unheeded or ignored after meeting the stepmother of her husband, Solange (Kathryn Hunter), who looks harmless and sounds as if she couldn’t be happier to have a new daughter and to have a grandchild in her final years soon. In fact, Solange implies that her health is declining to an extent that even a year might be optimistic. But despite the couple wanting nothing to do with her, Solange promises something they desperately need: If they take her in, they’ll become the sole beneficiaries of her will. Whatever amount that includes when she writes it down for the couple is all the convincing Belinda needs. They agree, but of course, it isn’t long before everything starts going horribly, awfully wrong. Lights flicker, weird tongues echo through the halls, and Belinda becomes suspicious that Solange wants to replace her. The very premise of this movie is like a comedic setup, and Solange is incredibly convincing. The performance is a spectacle; she dives into this character with her body, mind, and voice. There’s an apparent twisted joy that Solange gets in being far more cunning than anyone would suspect. Belinda sure doesn’t spot it until it’s too late. Who would believe a woman who needs two canes to hobble around, speaks with such downhome frankness, and sincerely appears not to be able to hurt a fly would turn out to be, as Norman makes it clear moments before she comes? Anyway, it’s just what Norman foreshadows the first time he informs Belinda of his stepmother. Solange has her family pray before meals, even though Norman tells her this isn’t that kind of house. She starts to install religious imagery wherever she can, including anthropology professor Belinda’s statues of African goddesses. Even in her most vulnerable state, the stepmother-in-law seems like she has a plan, using incontinence to make life hell for Belinda and to win Belinda’s sympathy. Some of the performances suggested that The Front Room would eventually build to something chilling, but it never does. Instead, it’s in an odd tonal limbo between comedy and horror. It’s neither scary enough to be upsetting nor funny enough to elicit more than a few chuckles. For as much as The Front Room clearly has going for it, in big performances from Kathryn Hunter and a handful of well-presented shots, none of it coalesces in any meaningful way. It finishes so suddenly that a good 15 minutes of critical footage seems to have got lost somewhere. Essentially, The Front Room falls short of delivering on its potential, missing the mark by blending horror and comedy without fully committing to either genre.
OUR RATING – A CONFUSED 3