The grotesque, the abominable, and an ostentatious display of Christian symbols and art make up the grammar of cringe horror in this recent A24 presentation, “The Front Room” (2024). The film also puts the narrative of hagsploitation at the forefront. The horror lies more in the very real shared experience of generational racism than in the psychological and supernatural.
Max Eggers and Sam Eggers present the film as a variation of camp horror where the secularization of the new world has brought back from the dead– or the verge of dead– an evil old KKK grandmother and put her in a shared household with her prey: an African American non-Christian daughter-in-law. The rest is up to us to decode.
The Front Room (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
The Sacred Triptych and the Disruption of Domestic Tranquility
“The Front Room” opens with a frame of a triptych mirror assemblage resembling the Christian triptychs of the Virgin Mary occupying the central piece and two outer wings occupied by her angels. Here, the central piece is adorned by the old Solange with a baby in her arms, and Bellinda and Norman remain acquiesced to her dominion, so they are allowed on the outer wings. This instantly sets the stage for what is to come.
Bellinda is an exceptionally hardworking and adept academician caught in the quagmire of institutional inability to value her merit. Her second child is expected to arrive anytime after the loss of her firstborn, Wallace. She lives a tranquil life in a quaint house with her husband, Norman Gene. However, the tranquility is not enduring as the arrival of a guest would disrupt the entire dynamics of their close-knit family.
Can Solange’s Arrival Shatter the Fragile Peace of the Gene Household?
One night, Norman receives a phone call from a strange number. The croaky voice of a woman from the other end introduces herself as Norman’s mother. This call distresses Norman because his stepmother, Solange, is looking to renew the contract against his will. Norman’s father is on the deathbed, and Solange wants Norman to visit him. When Norman’s father dies, at the funeral, Solange reveals her will to Norman, and Bellinda says that the former is ready to transfer her massive inheritance in exchange for being welcomed in their house to spend her last days in peace. On Bellinda’s insistence, Norman accepts the offer.
Solange arrives in the Gene household and occupies the front room on the ground floor, originally meant for the baby. Solange is sure that she is a vessel for the Holy Spirit. Norman warns Bellinda of the abuse Solange is capable of inflicting. Bellinda finds a certificate from the United Daughters of the Confederacy amongst Solange’s belongings.
The Clash of Beliefs and Power
Solange’s arrival unleashes religious and racial intrusions into the dynamics of Gene’s small family. The old woman insists on endowing the unborn child with a name of her choice. She puts her hand on Bellinda’s belly and conjures up the name Lawrence as a tribute to Bellinda’s father. To fit the baby’s gender, she adjusts it to ‘Laurie.’
Yearning for a union with the Holy Spirit, Solange is found lying around the house still, which becomes a cause of concern for Bellinda. Solange also confesses to being incontinent. With Norman gone for work, Bellinda is compelled to tend to the ailing but no less overbearing Solange and herself. At the dinner table, in Norman’s presence, Bellinda speaks up about Solange’s condition, much to the latter’s chagrin. The following day, Bellinda finds Solange’s Ichthys necklace dangling around her Inanna idol. She opens the door to Solange’s room and finds Solange lying in a mess of her own excrement.
What is the meaning of the fish necklace?
At the bath, Bellinda confronts Solange about the fish necklace around her statue. Solange asks Bellinda if she knows what the fish stands for, which is met with the same counterquestion by Bellinda. Solange explains that the fish is a symbol for identifying Christians. To this, Bellinda replies that, in fact, the Christians stole the symbol from the Goddess. Bellinda’s accusations offset Solange’s tongue-in-cheek deflection and defense. She discards the possibility of religious assimilation and terms it as the healthy exchange of cultural and religious icons. To Solange, an inbred racist, Bellinda’s ethno-racial identity, which is always on the disadvantaged extreme, is similar to the persecution of Christians.
That night, Solange’s signs and wonders seemingly cause Bellinda to go into labor. She delivers her daughter through a cesarean section. When Bellinda returns from the hospital with Laurie, much to her horror, she has to stand as a helpless witness to a house that has been refurbished according to Solange’s whims. Even more horrifying is the fact that Solange has invited her prayer circle, which has been waiting for the arrival of Bellinda and Laurie.
They force her to comply with their illegible prayer as they keep touching her and Laurie. Bellinda is distraught to find out that Norman was not oblivious to any of this about to be happening. What causes the couple to be at odds is Solange’s act of removing all of Bellinda’s goddess statues and replacing them with an urn containing Norman’s father’s ashes.
Why does Solange turn hostile at the dinner table?
With an axe of tension rocking precariously over their heads for too long, Bellinda finally decides to oust Solange at the dinner table. In a fit, Solange declares that the couple should be grateful for her charitable nature. Solange constantly vacillates between projecting herself as the victim and as the head of the family. Subsequently, this causes Bellinda to retort vehemently. She confronts Solange about her blindfolded stance on racism and asks if Laurie would be treated fairly in her ideal Christian state.
An agitated Solange flinching from the offending brush with Bellinda’s progressivist rant counter-rants on the secularisation of American education. She goes as far as demeaning Bellinda’s Haitian parentage. Finally, she confesses to having been related to the Ku Klux Klan. As Solange tries to throw an infantile tantrum and mocks Bellinda by imitating the horse-riding Klansman, Bellinda shoves her aside violently.
How does Solange manage to make Bellinda in thrall of her?
Bellinda spots that her cesarean stitch mark has vanished. Solange says that she gave birth to a girl once, but the child died soon after. Solange strikes a deal with Bellinda: She can tear away the Confederacy certificate in exchange for accepting the fish locket. Hinting at her psychic ability to connect with Wallace, Solange speaks on behalf of Wallace and, in his purported voice, asks Bellinda to let Solange play the role of the mother. Bellinda notices that the fish necklace pacifies Laurie.
Bellinda is haunted by hallucinations of Solange as the Virgin Mary suckling the infant Jesus, here Laurie. When Bellinda snatches Laurie away from Solange, she threatens her that soon there will be a time when the entire God-fearing world, including Norman, will suckle from her– an almost warning for the resurrected Christian order in a desacralized world. Solange cunningly hits herself against a table and purposely bruises herself to pin the blame on Bellinda. Thus begins another cycle of horror as Solange has the entire house on its toes serving her while she relishes her bedridden days.
How does the last night at the house look like for Bellinda?
On the other hand, Pastor Lewis drops by and asks Bellinda to believe in Solange’s inherent goodwill and love for his son and the family. He reveals that she has paid the house’s mortgage in full, which causes Bellinda to break down. That night, Bellinda is greeted with a disgusting vision: Solange suckling and cradling a fallen Norman, much like in the image of Pietà. Solange’s milk nourishes the secular world devoid of any knowledge of Christianity, and it has to begin with Norman.
These appearances of Solange as Mother Mary appear not to have an objective reality since they remain perceptible to Bellinda only. Solange bites the baby and tries to incriminate Bellinda. Norman asks Solange to move out of the house as they have had enough of her. Solange, in turn, pukes on his face. Throughout the night, the house reverberates with Solange’s words, “Why can’t I die?”
The image juxtapositioned with her cries shows one of the walls of the house sporting a painting, ‘Still Life with a Skull, and a Writing Quill,’ by Pieter Claesz. Claesz’s painting becomes a commentary on the diegetic action if observed closely. The predominance of the skull as an image of death invites our attention. However, one of the other elements is equally important– an oil lamp whose little glow at the wick and a puff of smoke suggests it has just gone out. Perhaps this indicates that Solange’s life is also on the verge of going away.
The Front Room (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
How does Bellinda escape the hell of horror and disgust?
The following day, Bellinda is overjoyed to find that Laurie, who had stopped feeding from her, has started to attach to her. Bellinda goes downstairs and opens Solange’s door, and we learn she is dead. With Solange’s death, Bellinda finds the liberty to throw out all her Christian belongings.
The film then cuts to a few years later when the family has moved into a new house. Bellinda is pregnant again, this time with twins. As she drives to her new job interview, singing “Non, je ne regrette rien” by Edith Piaf, she is relieved to embrace this new life away from the shadows of the remains of Solange. At the interview, the dean asks her how she has managed to juggle the precarious situation at home. A flashback drags us back to the night of Solange’s death. As Solange screams, “Why can’t I die?” and tries to bring the house to her disposal, Bellinda silently smothers her to death.
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