It’s been a very long time since Brandy Norwood (who’s better known without her last name) faced some truly evil forces—since I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, to be specific. But she’s back in the latest film from horror giant A24, and now she’s facing a different kind of evil: her mother-in-law.
The Front Room is the directorial debut of Max and Sam Eggers, brothers of The Northman director Robert Eggers. Both Max and Sam have worked on their brother’s films: Max co-wrote The Lighthouse, and Sam was a production assistant on The Witch.
Max and Sam also wrote the screenplay for The Front Room, which is based on a short story by British writer Susan Hill (The Woman in Black). The plot is all there in the trailer: Pregnant Belinda (Brandy) finds herself in a deeply uncomfortable situation when she and her husband (Andrew Burnap) take in his stepmother (Kathryn Hunter) after his father dies. It was dad’s last wish, you see. (Sure it was.)
The older woman’s first move, upon arriving at their home, is to take over the front room, which was to be the baby’s nursery. And everything goes downhill from there, fueled by racism, religious fervor, and maybe something more.
If Hunter looks familiar, you may remember her as Syril Karn’s controlling mother on Andor. She’s also all three Witches in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, Swiney in Poor Things, and appears in the upcoming Megalopolis.
The Front Room is in theaters September 6th.
