Making her return to horror movies for the first time since that disastrous trip to the Bahamas for I Still Know You Did Last Summer, Brandy has the mother-in-law from hell—literally, it would seem—in The Front Room, the upcoming A24 horror-comedy. In The Front Room, directors Max and Sam Eggers, brothers of Lighthouse director Robert Eggers, follow Belinda (Brandy Norwood), a newly pregnant wife who makes the big mistake of allowing her mother-in-law (Kathryn Hunter) to move in after her husband’s father dies.
Much like the rotten miscreant child played by Martin Short in Clifford, stage and screen legend Kathryn Hunter makes Belinda’s life a living hell, presumably for her own amusement. Hunter lumbers around the trailer with her dual canes, blending in some of that passive-aggressive parenting from Andor and the physical feats of MacBeth. She’s also a card-carrying racist, hanging on to her Daughters of the Confederacy certificate and micro-aggressing the hell out of Brandy. The trailer throws a lot at the audience, including some scenes that harken to Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!, others like the ending from Hereditary. But the jist of the story is if Belinda doesn’t welcome her mother-in-law into her home, her husband will be cut out of the will. Unfortunately, her mother-in-law is an occultist, or a witch, or both, or plain annoying.
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Parts of the trailer seem surprisingly broad for A24, especially considering the Eggers family name. The bright photography and cliche story must be a cover for something more sinister. Given that it’s A24, we’d bet on it. Either way, Brandy and Kathryn Hunter in a horror-fueled You, Me And Dupree? Sign us up.
The Front Room opens nationwide on September 6.