The Front Room is an insufferable grind from a writer grinding his axe in a way that’s gonna make Thanksgiving dinner awkward. It’s clearly a case of working through family issues and making me pay for it. No thanks.

It’s about a a young couple who take his cranky, overly-religious aged mother in… and how she begins to control their lives, including the wife’s prengnacy. And if you can’t see through the deep psychological issues being worked out, I guess you haven’t heard enough in-law jokes.

My main problem, besides how boring the movie is, is how it relies on old-people-amiright kind of gross-outs and scares. A lot of gags about adult diapers and their necessity. Because old people are gross, yo.

I can’t say much for the cast… Brandy (Norwood) plays the pregnant wife and some guy plays her husband. The old lady should have taken tips for playing old from June Squib. She’s meant to be scary, winds up annoying in an in-laws and grandparents can be a bit much, or they can be this psycho kind of way. She overacts her brains out and ceases to be creepy and becomes ridiculous.

The finale of the film was a shrug of a whatever. I thought they were going for a more supernatural angle which would have been old hat… but instead went a more surprising route. It’s a flashback that made me shrug? I mean… “oooh you so dark, movie.” but also… so what? Had to wait that long for that pointless of a surprise? Next!

The film is written by various Eggers, one of whom cowrote The Lighthouse with his brother Robert Eggers. Methinks brother Robert got the talent… but you can see in various random “dream sequences” that the remaining Eggers were trying to emulate the surrealism of their brothers better film.

I really hated this movie for being a boring, unscary working out of in-law trauma… because old people, amiright?!?! Which is usually the least interesting way to get a cheap “eww” out of an audience that doesn’t involve blood ‘n gore (but maybe other bodily liquids). I can’t say much it does right.

Score: 58