The Front Room - Movie Review

The Front Room brings into focus the gothic story of a couple who have just become pregnant and have to host the husband’s photophobic, ill, estranged stepmother. This turns their previously happy life around, transforming their home into a stage of paranoia. As this stepmother’s tangled history rears its head, a dark pressure envelops. It paints a picture on losing mysteries and solace, crying razor’s edge between illusions and reason.

It portrays them on family and the looming terror of complexity. Right from the start it grabs you with a rising tension and disbelief. It tends to point out the disturbing relationship between families and how suppressed fear can extend to sheer insanity. The whole concept seems more like traditional horror with the neo-psychological touch added, all made even more spooky by the mood that the film sets.

Brandy Norwood gives a believable performance for the horrified estranged stepmother which sense her character requires. Andrew Burnap and the rest of the cast give a good show, thus audiences find themselves immersed in the constricting web of suspense. Kathryn Hunter’s fully realized performances expertly rollout the lines between insanity and compassion, creating a paradoxical figure of shadow over the chiaroscuro narrative.

While Max Eggers himself writes the film and Sam Eggers directs it, the film smoothly interweaves both the psychological aspects of the horror genre and a conventionalist sense of it. Their vision remains all through the story line and retention of the horror theme is awesomely done giving the genre a unique appeal that makes you find beauty in horror.

The music also supports the tone of the movie with the haunting tune that occasionally builds up the intensity into almost frightening tunes that create the tension. The music it creates is such an unspoken developer in the story being told on celluloid.

Darkness, shadowy reflections that depict paranoia and fear are conspicuous in the cinematography of this movie from the interiors of the couple’s house to distorted environments. Every frame seems to have been, in one way or another, designed with the intention of increasing the psychological claustrophobia of everything, thrusting the audience with alarming effectiveness into the storyline.

The elaborate ‘mise-en-scene’ of The Front Room adds much to the speculation. From the detailed and filled with unnecessary items front room, to the rooms dimly light hallways – each location underlines a sense of claustrophobia thus benefiting the film. Pay particular attention should be made to the interior design and lights as they enhance the dominant sense of oppression.

Such effects are well incorporated and enforced in significant moments without overusingthem and maintaining focus on traditional horror elements. The amount of practical effects is solid, and their use is mandatory to increase the tension and immerse people in the films’ atmosphere even deeper.

The editing enhances anticipation and a gradual transition to madness by precise cuts that make the audience feel the films’ atmosphere actively throughout each thriller. This enables the transitions to be smooth so that tension never drops.

The pace is slow at the beginning, yet they grow progressively more intense. It caters to the protagonists’ psychological arc, rising with the tension, that becomes their paranoia and uncertainty and reaches the apex at the rising suspense that fortifies the climax.

The portrayal of relationships in The Front Room is done with much nuance and tenderness in the dialogues that are masterfully woven to provide the audience with the necessary amounts of ambiguity and doubt. The interactions increase substance to create psychological drama happening behind the walls of domesticity.

At times, however, it may overemphasize gothic drama turning into mainstream horror cliches in The Front Room. Further extension of specific side-stories could have added another layer to the story, and reveal characters’ intent.

The Front Room successfully sows the grain of fear, addressing the concept of family through the prism of paranoia and discomfort. It is an exciting, frightening ride making the spectator eager to follow it through the dark halls filled with shadows, which leaves a certain kind of coldness after the movie is over. Lastly it is symbolic for how familiar turns into the horror in its purest form as a family.