Abbott and Costello. Laurel and Hardy. Martin and Lewis. Smothers and, you know, the other Smothers. The history of entertainment is filled with beloved comedy duos, whose personalities and performance styles either compliment or clash with each other perfectly. They are the stuff that whimsical legends are made of, and their hallowed halls may need to make room for a brand new iconic double act: Brandy Norwood and Kathryn Hunter.
“The Front Room” is a new horror-comedy from the twin Eggers Brothers, Sam and Max, whose older brother Robert directed the acclaimed horror films “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse.” Max Eggers has a co-writing credit on “The Lighthouse,” a bizarrely funny little nightmare about two horny men losing their minds together on a tiny island in the ocean — “Yer fond of me lobster! Say it! Say it! Say it!” — and it feels like a spiritual cousin to their newest effort. These are horror films, yes, but also eerie discomfort comedies, where the humor and desperation go hand-in-hand.
“The Front Room” stars Brandy Norwood as Belinda, an anthropology professor who is pregnant with her second child, after her first died under tragic circumstances. Ignored and disrespected at work, she quits after their latest indignity, but now the family credit cards are maxed out. Something has to be done, and quick.
Fate intervenes when her weenie of a husband, Norman (Andrew Burnap, “Under the Banner of Heaven”), finds out his father died. His last request was that Norman invite his emotionally abusive, ultra-Christian stepmother Solange (Hunter) to live with them. In exchange, they’ll inherit all of her life savings when she dies. She’s very old, she can barely walk, and her holdings are so massive it takes time just to write down the number. Norman is terrified of Solange but Belinda insists that they take this miracle of an opportunity. After all, it’s just a deal with the devil. What’s the worst that could happen?
The worst, it turns out, is Solange will be Solange. Condescending, racist, conniving, she takes over “the front room” of the house — which they had reserved for their baby — and becomes as needy as a newborn. Soon, Belinda endures Solange’s barbs as well as her feces, which the incontinent stepmother can’t help but smear all over the house. And then of course there’s the actual baby, which Solange seems to want to dominate and take charge of as well.
If none of that sounds terribly funny, that’s because it isn’t. At least, not in principle. “The Front Room” tackles hefty and depressing topics like intergenerational abuse, elderly abuse, and the way people with money use it to declare ownership over those who need it. None of these topics are any fun, so why, oh why, are we laughing?
We’re laughing because Norwood and Hunter are dynamite together, that’s why. Norwood tries valiantly to keep her cool while Hunter, playing a reverse nightmare version of Martin Short in the 1994 comedy “Clifford,” has free reign to push her as far as she can possibly go. Solange defecates into her bed, forcing Norman to carry her upstairs to a bathtub (she’s never taken a shower before and she won’t start now), and Solange makes the most outlandishly smug face you can imagine to Belinda on her way out. The eyes are the eyes of a Looney Tune. And the Eggers film it like the “Extreme Close-Up!” gag from “Wayne’s World,” just slightly less subtle.
We know “The Front Room” is having complex conversations about familial power dynamics and postpartum mental health issues and all manner of real-life horrors, but Hunter’s circus clown theatrics make it impossible not to sympathize with Norton’s exasperation. Even in a situation where Solange would, by all rights, be the actual aggrieved party — she is, after all, physically infirm and without family, and relies on her stepson and daughter-in-law for constant care — she makes you wonder if she would even deserve the last Tic Tac in the box, let alone tender loving care.
Movies like “Clifford” and “Problem Child,” which attempted to eke comedy out of psychologically damaging family behavior, are often a tough sell because they still expect us to feel good at the end. Horror-comedies have no such expectation, so “The Front Room” gets away with it. Belinda’s frustration is comical because Hunter’s performance and the film’s many undignified situations make it so, and because the audience can empathize with her torment. There is, to a degree, a microcosm of cultural rage at boomers, who have all the wealth and power and lord it over younger generations who just have to wait their turn, which at this rate may never come.
But the scariest part of “The Front Room” is that we see it from Belinda’s perspective, and while we sympathize with her plight, there’s a non-zero chance that her rage at Solange is amplified by her own anxieties. Even if Solange is a cruel human being, she is still a human being. Maybe. She might have supernatural powers. She might be a demon with six nipples, a super-charged mothering machine that puts Belinda to shame. And if she is, we have leave to laugh. If she isn’t, the same audiences who guffaw at the guffaw-worthy “The Front Room” might not find it so funny in 50 years, when it might look more like a tale of young, wretched people conning an old and needy woman out of her savings.
The Eggers Brothers have a canny way of balancing those wildly different tones. We’re frightened for each character, even when we point and giggle at them. It’s a twisted film. Funny on the surface, funny in depth. Horrifying on the surface, maybe more so in depth. Since Brandy Norwood and Kathryn Hunter play brilliantly off of each other, the comedy and the terror are deeply uncomfortable. In all the best ways.
Editor’s note: An early draft of this review misnamed Kathryn Hunter with the surname Newton in several instances. That has since been amended.
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