“The Front Room” marks Brandy’s big return to the horror genre, over 25 years after starring in “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.”
The singer-actor stars as Belinda, a pregnant woman still reeling from the loss of her first child, Wallace, in a stillbirth when her husband’s estranged, evangelical, and deeply evil stepmother Solange (Kathryn Hunter) maneuvers her way into their home after the death of Norman’s father.
Solange promises to leave her son Norman (Andrew Burnap) and Belinda all of her money after she dies. The catch? They need to take care for her in — what she claims are — her final days.
The young couple, who are struggling financially, begrudgingly accepts the offer. But very quickly come to regret it. The extremely religious (and racist) Solange begins to take over their home and their lives, even laying claim to their unborn daughter.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for the ending of “The Front Room.”
After plenty of tension, including many, many scenes of a pregnant and newly-postpartum Belinda being forced to clean up after an incontinent Solange (and one extremely horrifying hallucination of Solange breastfeeding the adult Norman), Belinda finally reaches her breaking point.
When Norman confronts Belinda over a bite mark on their newborn daughter Laurie’s arm, Belinda tells him that it must have been Solange who bit the baby. She demands that Norman make her leave their home.
Solange doesn’t take it well, spitting in Norman’s face when he tells her she must go, and spends the rest of that night yelling, “Why can’t I die?” Ironically, in the morning, right after Belinda finally manages to successfully nurse Laurie (who’d been struggling to latch), she goes downstairs to Solange’s bedroom to find the menace dead in her bed.
Initially, it appears that Solange died of natural causes, an expected progression of her decline throughout the movie. After her death, Norman and Belinda restart their lives in a new home, and Belinda, now pregnant with twins, happily drives to a new job interview.
The big twist comes in the final seconds of the film when Belinda’s flashback during her job interview appears to reveal that she actually smothered Solange to death to put an end to the torment.
In an interview with Sam and Max Eggers, the brothers who wrote and directed the film, we break down the movie’s most shocking moments, how Brandy was cast, and why that final twist might not be exactly what you think it is.
“The Front Room” is based on a short story by Susan Hill from her 2016 book, “The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories.” How did you guys land on adapting this story for your first feature film?
Max: It was given to me by our producers, and then I shared it with Sam once I had read it. We were so blessed to get it because we’d just been through a similar experience of taking care of our grandfather; seeing the decline. So we knew exactly how to adapt it.
Sam: I don’t know if you’ve ever taken care of somebody in decline, but when you open a door, you never know what you’re going to find. It all came from our personal experience taking care of our grandfather and trying to reflect that onto the screen.
The short story is a really terrifying piece, but I think we wanted to get a little more outrageous.
That’s interesting because you took the bones of that story and added so many other layers to it. Describe the process of tweaking the source material to mesh with your personal experience.
Sam: Trying to make it personal begat everything in a way. Because, in the short story, it’s set in England, the Irwins are religious, and Solange is not. But Max and I are not religious, and we didn’t grow up that way, so we updated it to a modern setting, bringing it to the US and flipping it to make Solange the religious one, a southern Christian conservative.
Max: We’re always careful to say, of course, this is not representative of all of the elderly or of what happens when you’re dying. Solange is so unique, and…we’re inspired by our grandfather. He was nothing like her. He was a southern gentleman, but he had isms, and he had an accent, and he was charming even though he became this baby I guess, in some ways, we had to take care of. And it was surreal, and it was sometimes hilarious.
Speaking of hilarious, the tone of the movie was surprisingly humorous. What were your inspirations for the campy elements?
Max: “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” was a big inspiration for us. Because when you watch that film, it’s bizarre. …It is a thriller, but it’s also really funny, surprisingly, and it’s dealing with serious subjects just as we are, but it’s shining a unique light onto that and trying to confront you with difficult subjects.
The original short story does not include a racial element. Was Belinda always a Black woman in the story as you envisioned it?
Sam: As we envisioned it, yes. This equation of the wicked mother and the good mother is a time immemorial, millennia age-old tale. But…if you’re going to do something close to “Baby Jane,” but also “Rosemary’s Baby,” if you’re going to do that again, it’s got to be something relevant.
From an archetypal standpoint, I think Solange represents the wickedest of wicked stepmothers. That was our vision for her, and making her a southern, Christian, conservative white woman representing the patriarchal part of our society, well, what is the opposite of that? Who is our Cinderella?
And I think that’s why it was important to have it be a woman of color, a Black woman, and having the audience relating to her against this force that we kind of have to confront and smother, as it were.
How did you find each member of your cast?
Max: Well, the first person cast was Kathryn. It was challenging to find somebody willing to do all that. For Belinda, it was difficult to find somebody like it was for Solange.
We were looking for somebody who’s willing to go through it all with Solange. Finding that Cinderella that you could immediately believe and buy into and root for —Brandy got it immediately though. She brought so much personal connection to it and was really wanting to challenge herself and do all of this.
You said it was hard to cast these roles. Why’s that?
Max: It wasn’t so much the actors or anything like that. It was just people are like, “You want my client to do what? You want my client to be remembered for farting on camera?” It’s a difficult subject matter, putting it one way. And then I think it’s just finding somebody like Kathryn who was willing, who wants to explore the dark side of stuff and is OK with being covered in stuff and actually saying, “More, please. Put more on.”
Sam: I remember when we were rehearsing, she pulled us aside, and she was like, “I think there should be more poo.”
How much of Solange’s very particular physicality was in the script versus what Kathryn brought to the performance?
Sam: There was stuff in the script that was specific, but of course, I think Kathryn brought her own magic to it. I think the type of canes that she used was something that she was researching, trying to figure out what the right thing was. The way her feet moved was all her. I mean, she practiced for months trying to get it right.
Max: There’s a scene where Solange is scurrying across the hall with a pillow, and there’s so much footage, I would say five or six or seven takes of Kathryn doing these completely improvised, incredible pieces of physical comedy with that pillow.
One of the most disturbing scenes is Belinda’s hallucination of Solange breastfeeding Norman. What was the vibe like on set filming that moment?
Max: I have to say, the thing I feel so bad about with that scene was Andrew’s back. Because he had to be in a certain position for so long, and he was like, after I would say however many takes, he was like, “Guys, this has got to be it because my back…”
Sam: And the stuff that was the milk actually was oatmeal or something. And by the end of it, he was like, “I’m going to throw up. This smells so bad,” but everybody was committed, including Andrew.
It’s left up in the air whether Solange actually is in touch with some otherworldly power, with hints like Belinda’s C-section scar rapidly healing and Solange somehow knowing Wallace’s name. Was that purposefully ambiguous?
Max: Absolutely. Also Belinda is in every single scene, and it’s all from her perspective, and we are very intentional about how reliable is she as a narrator?
We were very inspired by many films, but one especially is “The Innocents” from the 1960s, starring Deborah Kerr. It is one of the greatest ghost stories ever, but it is a masterclass in the art of ambiguity and in the unreliable narrator: “How much of this is what I’m seeing real? Are there ghosts or not?” That was something that was a touchstone for us.
The ending is also a little ambiguous. We never actually saw Solange bite the baby, as Belinda accused her of doing. Personally, I wasn’t convinced and wondered if Belinda may have done it herself to give Norman the push that he needed to finally get Solange out of there.
Max: Yeah, absolutely. It’s intentional.
Just from an unreliable narrator standpoint, from a genre perspective, we want people to, even at the end, wonder, “Did she actually do that? Did she kill Solange? Was that actually what happened? Or is this just some kind of fantasy that she’s having that she imagined that she did it?”
So the bite mark, I think we don’t want to have any answers, per se, but we do want people to wonder, “Could she have actually done that?”
Sam: I think it goes, too, to that point of the truth of how does somebody like Solange affect you and what do you become as a result of it? And oftentimes, you could become that thing that you fear if you let it.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
“The Front Room” is now in theaters.
