Movie Breakdown: The Front Room

Pre-Screening Stance:

Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Northman) has a couple of brothers, Sam and Max, and The Front Room is their directorial debut. That’s neat, but if I’m being honest, I’m in on this one because I just really want to see Brandy star in an A24 film.

Post-Screening Ramble:

In a whole slew of ways, The Front Room reminded me of M3GAN. It’s got the premise of a horror film – a super old, dual cane wielding, talks-in-tongues level of a religious woman (Kathryn Hunter) worms her way into the home of her stepson (Andrew Burnap) and his pregnant wife (Brandy) and then goes about terrorizing them – but it’s far more funny than it is scary or creepy. And like the aforementioned movie with the killer robot, there’s never a point where the film take itself too seriously and at just about 90 minutes, it’s over and done before you feel the need to shuffle around in your seat. Kudos to directors Sam and Max Eggers, who also co-wrote the script, for managing to keep their debut film so lean and fun. In regards to the cast, Hunter is fantastic as the old bag Solange, but I’m also happy to report that if you’re here for Brandy, she shines … despite spending a lot of this film covered in human waste. Here’s hoping that such an entertaining turn from her means we’ll start to see her in more things outside of music videos and direct-to-streaming type content.

The Front Room is an occasionally icky, laugh-out-loud silly time. If that sounds like your kind of thing, then you should consider giving it a shot when it hits theaters tomorrow, September 6.

One Last Thought:

Kathryn Hunter’s Solange frequently yells “I’m an M-E-double S mess!” all throughout this movie and that’s just going to have to be in my bank of go-to phrases for the foreseeable future.