‘The Front Room’ is a Disgusting Look at a Monstrous Mother-in-Law

The Front Room

Zero Stars

This is a horrible, terrible, awful movie. While it’s supposed to be a thriller, the only frightening part comes at the final frames where you realize that not only did someone write this monstrosity, but someone funded it and found actors to take part in it. That, right there, is the truly terrifying realization at the end.

‘The Front Room’ promises a battle of wits and wills when Solange (Kathryn Hunter), an elderly stepmother, moves in with her stepson, Norman (Andrew Burnap) and his pregnant wife Belinda (Brandy Norwood). The tagline is intriguing, “All hell moves in.”

Kathryn Hunter as Solange at Her Husband Funeral
© 2024 A24

I thought I was in for at least a moderately decent psychological battle against an evil stepmother and her daughter-in-law. In reality, this is a film with reverse elder abuse in which Solange uses every aging cliché against Belinda. This includes incontinence, and I’ll gracefully leave it at that.

Norman and Belinda are just getting over the loss of their first child, who died as an infant. Belinda is in the later stages of her pregnancy when we meet them, and she is facing her hours being cut as a professor at the college she teaches at. Apparently, the dean of students is bringing on younger professors for cheap. Belinda can’t get an audience with the dean to work out her schedule, so she quits.

A Dysfunctional Family Dinner
© 2024 A24

Norman is a lawyer and works as a public defender. He’s in line to be a judge but that hinges on him being able to get a plea deal in a case he is assigned to. He has kept this quiet from Belinda and brings it up to her when she asks why he can’t be at home more to help her.

Norman’s father has passed away, and he hesitates going to the funeral because he doesn’t want to see Solange again. When he was a boy, Solange apparently abused him, refusing to let him eat until she was convinced he was “filled with the Holy Spirit.” This also propels Norman’s avoidance of anything to do with church.

Kathryn Hunter as Solange
© 2024 A24

Belinda convinces him they need to go to the funeral where he is confronted with a proposition. His father’s dying wish was for Norman to take care of Solange in her waning years. Solange offers her entire fortune if she is able to live out the rest of her days in their home.

Solange turns out to be a complete nightmare, and Belinda must navigate being an abused caretaker, and very quickly, a mother to her newborn. The emotional and physical toll of both prove just about too much for her, and Norman is scarcely there to help.

There was a point, about midway through this film, that I wondered to myself, “Who thought someone would want to watch this?” Followed by a quick realization, “Why the heck am I watching this?”

As someone who has watched countless horror films, some violent and horrific just for the sake of being violent and horrific, I found this film to be a disgusting dietribe of an elderly woman abusing her daughter-in-law, stepson and eventually her granddaughter.

Brandy Norwood as Belinda
© 2024 A24

Solange will throw herself on the ground, bashing her head on a coffee table on the way down, in order to make it look like Belinda is the abuser. Solange also leaves bite marks on the infant daughter in hopes of making Norman believe that Belinda did this.

There are also very strange, odd scenes involving Belinda having visions of Solange breastfeeding the infant and eventually Norman. I imagine it’s meant to be psychologically unsettling and jarring. Presented as it is, it’s neither. It’s bad filmmaking.

If there’s a positive take-away, Norwood took the material as far as she could. She’s clearly a talented actress and has fantastic instincts that would easily serve a much more capable thriller very well. Hunter did a decent job of bringing Solange to life. The problem with this film is certainly not the acting.

I wanted the psychological thrill battle the trailer promised between evil mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. I wanted to see the tension between them ratchet to a point of no return with some kind of major conflict at its conclusion.

This script is so inept and so ill-conceived I wonder who gave this a “green light,” and for the love of cinema, why?

I really, really, really hated this movie.

Horror, Mystery & Thriller