Kathryn Hunter is a beast in The Front Room, which is otherwise a rare dud for A24

In the past few years, A24 has become synonymous with a certain type of groundbreaking cinema. The production and distribution company has long worked with emerging filmmakers to tell new stories and, particularly among young people, they’ve had significant success in creating zeitgeist-defining film events. From their more humble beginnings, they’ve since produced two Best Picture winners, Moonlight and Everything Everywhere All at Once. They’ve had special success within genre cinema, with movies like Hereditary, Midsommar, Talk to Me, Bodies, Bodies, Bodies and I Saw the TV Glow in their repertoire. Through foresight and marketing, they’ve managed more often than not, to connect with a young cinephile audience.

Their latest film, The Front Room, represents a rare clink in the armour — a cringeworthy dud. The brothers of Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse), Max Eggers & Sam Eggers make their feature directorial debut with a horror film about pregnancy and ageing. As the film begins, Belinda (Brandy Norwood) is about to burst. Though excited for the birth of her first child with her husband Norman (Andrew Burnap), her life seems to be falling apart. She loses her job and, suddenly, her husband’s cantankerous and domineering stepmother Solange (Kathryn Hunter) moves in with them. Obviously paralleling the twin fears of birth and death, the movie picks away at Belinda’s careful life as it becomes overwhelmed with uncertainty and new responsibilities as a caretaker. Her life goes to (literal) shit. 

Part of a legacy of recent horror films including X and The Visit, which examine our fear of ageing, the concept of highlighting the apparent monstrosity of the elderly strikes me as more cruel than horrific. Though growing older is often accompanied by new (and sometimes terrible) health afflictions, it seems unfair to exploit them solely for horror. The monstrosity of Solange’s leaking, twisted body might inspire a horrific repulsion, but matched with her abhorrent views and behaviour, the film seems to take the easy way out. It portrays her monstrosity at the expense of her humanity. The fragility of her body is never truly a landscape for compassion, but an obvious and clichéd opportunity for scatological horror.

It’s all the more impressive that actress Kathryn Hunter, as Solange, creates such a singular and gripping performance. Over-the-top and intensely physical, she builds up her character from nothing. Her Southern drawl adds honey to the creaking-door treble of her tone. The rich quality of her voice is persuasive even for its monstrosity. She moves around the home like a spider, a cubist incarnation of a woman who seems to have been broken apart and put together in the dark. She eclipses her co-stars in every way. Particularly Andrew Burnap, who plays Solange’s stepson. He seems so wide-eyed and lost, unable to root his character within anything resembling reality, further pulling the film off track. Hunter’s towering presence only serves to underline how aimless and unfocused the rest of the film is. 

Throwing a little too much at the audience to form any kind of coherent arguments, the movie isn’t just a body horror about birth and death. These two topics, the idea of caring for children and the elderly, already feels overwhelming to be tackled within the same film. But the movie doesn’t stop there, also attempting to tackle religious trauma, American racism and the precarity of labour within academics. The film overflows with ideas without any significant time to handle any of them with grace or thought. The film inevitably feels bloated, a drudgery rather than a nightmare. 

If the film earns two stars, they are both due to the presence of Kathryn Hunter. She proves she’s one of our greatest working actors, transforming a series of unsubstantial clichés into something tangible and raw. If The Front Room is worth watching, it’s only due to the immensity of her talent. ■

The Front Room opens in Montreal theatres on Friday, Sept 6.

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