The Front Room may be the most political horror film of 2024. The Eggers might almost agree.

An uncomfortable thread of racial, political and class tension runs through A24’s theatrical horror film The Front Roomalongside the Cronenbergian body horror and religious fantasy elements. It’s a complex, challenging project for twin brothers Sam and Max Eggers to tackle as their directorial debut, after they The Witch And The Lighthouserespectively under the leadership of their brother Robert Eggers.

Sam and Max Eggers adapted the film from a short story of the same name by The woman in black author Susan Hill, taken from the anthology The travel bag — but as they told Polygon in an interview coinciding with the film’s release, they radically changed the dynamics of that story. The themes their changes bring to the surface are felt strongly throughout the film, but the Eggers brothers are very careful about discussing those themes.

The one thing they talk about most is why they cast Brandy Norwood as the lead, Belinda, a heavily pregnant anthropology professor who suffers from strange visions while trying to be a polite hostess to her predatory, creepy mother-in-law, Solange (Kathryn Hunter).

“We cast Kathryn first, and we were looking for our Cinderella,” Sam Eggers told Polygon. “And Brandy, of course, is Cinderella. It was great that she read it and got it and could relate to it. I think she wanted to do something different, and she deserves all the credit for that. But (we had a) stepmother antagonist, so we had to find a Cinderella. That was the inspiration.”

If The Front Room opens, Belinda and her husband, Norman (Andrew Burnap), are having money problems. Belinda is untenured and her boss is reassigning all of her classes to other teachers, while he avoids her and refuses to admit that he is doing any of those things. Is it because she is black? Because she is heavily pregnant? Something else? It is unclear, because he will not verbalize his decisions.

That kind of deliberate ambiguity extends through the film’s main action, which finds Belinda at sea in her career and at home. She and Norman are forced to take in his decrepit, vulnerable mother, Solange, a fervent Christian who immediately begins replacing Belinda’s collection of anthropological goddess icons with crosses, among other invasive moves. Her beliefs manifest themselves in odd ways throughout the film. As Belinda deals with Solange’s racist microaggressions (and, in one scene, macroaggressions) and her increasing demands and deceptions, Belinda starts to have her own strange experiences as she tries to navigate the truth: How much of this is real? How much of it is Solange lying about everything? Polygon spoke to the Eggers brothers about what they were up to with all this.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

What do you say about religion in this film? A lot of films these days explore ideas about evil aspects of the supernatural, about exorcisms and demons, but it’s much rarer to see one where God is presented as an active presence. How did you arrive at that dynamic?

Max Eggers: In the short story, the Irwins — the central couple — are faithful, and Solange is irreligious. So from the beginning it was, Okay, so how do we deal with this and how do we make it personal? We decided to bring it to America, move the time period to today, and then flip the dynamic.

And then when we talk about religion, you have these millennials — or Gen-Xers, anyone in that arena — against this antagonist, who is, let’s say, baby boomer. We’re not religious ourselves, so we were able to bring Belinda’s perspective into it a little bit more authentically. But it wasn’t just about religion, it was about generational divides and how different generations want to talk about and engage with religion.

It felt natural for us to have Belinda be an anthropologist who deals with the mythic. She knows, through that lens, what a mother has been, through thousands of years, and what happened to the Mother Goddess, so to speak. And then you have the natural antagonist, this faithful Solange, who herself knows what is true, which is Christ. It spoke to us, by turning it around, about a kind of general, recognizable, generational divide.

Sam Eggers: More specifically, Solange is a charismatic evangelist, so she believes in the power of the Holy Spirit, and the power of tongues, and the laying on of hands. And I think that’s real for that person in today’s world. They believe that they can heal. They believe that they can speak the word of God through tongues. And it’s an interesting dynamic — as Solange is going downhill, Belinda’s world starts to get weirder and weirder. Solange’s extreme faith has that effect on Belinda, so she starts to not understand — she gets confused about what’s real and what’s not, because of how much Solange believes.

There is a version of this film that deals with that clash of beliefs and that clash of generations, but it doesn’t have any actual supernatural events or miracles. Why was it important for you to embrace that supernatural aspect?

Maximum: I think you hit the nail on the head with these questions about the ambiguity of faith. That was something we found so interesting. We cared for our grandfather as he declined. And when you’re dealing with death, and the fact that there’s very little support for it, in this country at least, it becomes a kind of surreal world. And then you throw in what it’s like to be an expectant mother — that can be very surreal in itself.

For us, it started with that idea of ​​ambiguity. When you have this person who is really honest and very committed in their faith, and thinks they have the power of the Holy Spirit, it seems very real. When people speak in tongues, they go into almost a possessed trance. It’s very effective and convincing. So if you’re dealing with a person who’s dying, and you’re dealing with a pregnancy, let’s say — I don’t know. Maybe it’s real!

It’s that interesting, ambiguous kind of soup. That really excited us creatively. When we started looking at things like the surrealist art movement and places where we could visually represent that, that in turn provoked a really exciting creative response.

Sam: I don’t know if you’ve ever had to take care of a (dying) family member. Our grandfather was mentally quite well, but physically he was deteriorating. So he would do these kinds of things, and we didn’t know if we were seeing something that was done on purpose. There was one moment when we came downstairs and there was blood on the wall, and we thought: How did that happen? It was so surreal.

I think taking care of someone in that surreal aspect – and obviously trying to stay true to the short story, which overtly features horror – led to Belinda’s visions and (the sense of) the supernatural in the film.

The idea of ​​a baby boomer confronting younger people with issues of religion, body control, self-determination, racism, and bearing the burdens of our elders, while simultaneously telling us it’s our duty to respect, revere, and obey them — these all feel like very timely, very political issues. Do you see this as a political film?

Maximum: Identity has proven to be a very controversial issue today, in terms of how we relate to each other, you know? There are certainly relevant modern examples of someone like Belinda and someone like Solange that you can find all over politics, all over culture. When we were updating it, when we were moving it to this country, when we were making Belinda the woman that she is, politics was definitely on our minds. I think you can’t escape that, unfortunately. As fun as the film is, hopefully these are real, serious issues, and we wanted to address them. I think it’s important to bring them to the forefront and have that mirror reflect back at us.

Was there anything specific you wanted to say about these issues, or express on behalf of people like Belinda?

Maximum: I can’t speak for people like Belinda. We’re not trying to claim any perspective that we don’t have, or haven’t earned. I think you can look at our Supreme Court as an example, to see a very common, similar story. Let me put it this way.

In the story we talk a lot about myths and modern beliefs, convictions. And I think we were careful to say in the film that — throughout the history of the Goddess, her symbols have been used as objects of possession. I think that’s maybe the most beautiful way to put it.

As you mentioned, you changed a lot of things from the original story, from the set-up to the ending. What was it about the story that initially attracted you? What was essential that made it interesting?

Sam: (Max) read it first, but I think it was the aspect of — we were taking care of our grandfather as he was declining, and in the short story Solange comes (to live with the Irwins) and she’s declining. So I think we could relate to that aspect right away, because it was pretty much happening as we were reading it. And we’re obviously big fans of Susan Hill. The woman in black? A great story. I think all the other stories in that book, The travel bagare incredible. So I think those two things drew us to the story.