One warning about in-law thriller ‘The Front Room’: It’s best to stay out

“The Front Room” — 1.5 stars

At a preview screening of “The Front Room,” Brandy Norwood appeared in a brief, recorded introduction, encouraging viewers of the psychological horror-comedy about a young woman coping with the arrival of her husband’s incontinent, racist stepmother to feel free to “scream, laugh, clap” and talk back to the movie. In other words, to treat it like any other late-summer/early-fall fright fest: as silly, disposable and formulaic interactive fun.

Well, she got the silly and disposable part right. Formulaic it’s not, mostly because of Kathryn Hunter in the overripe role of Solange, a stepmother-in-law from heck whose appearance upends Belinda’s quiet life as a new mother.

But despite what the singer/actress says, there’s not much to scream, let alone clap, about here. It’s a mostly domestic, not demonic, story line, focusing on tensions between Norwood’s harried Belinda and Solange, a grimacing and mugging harridan who seems to want Belinda’s baby all to herself. I certainly didn’t hear much shouting back at the screen.

Despite being co-written and co-directed by twins Max and Sam Eggers, making their feature debut, this contemporary tale shares little artistic DNA with the work of their older sibling, Robert Eggers, a filmmaker known for distinctive period dramas. The elder Eggers made “The Lighthouse”; the 1890s tale earned a 2020 Oscar nomination for its stark, black-and-white cinematography, and was memorable for a strange fixation on flatulence.

I suppose “The Front Room” does at least have farting in common with the family’s oeuvre. Solange notably and audibly lets one rip in the direction of the camera, which is focused on the character’s hindquarters. In general, the film’s humor depends almost entirely on the degree to which you find bodily excretions and/or eruptions funny. In several scenes, characters are holding their noses.

As Belinda and her forgettable husband, Norman, Norwood and Andrew Burnap are merely pawns in service of an overcooked plot based on a short story by Susan Hill. It is Hunter who makes the deepest impression, in an over-the-top performance that outdoes most of the supporting roles the character actress is known for.

Here, the barely 5-foot-tall master of physical theater charges headlong into a part other actresses might have merely phoned in (or, truth be told, turned down).

But it’s hard to imagine another actress in the role. When we first meet Solange, she clomps into frame, a spider-like hobgoblin walking with the aid of a pair of canes whose sound has been amplified in the editing booth to resonate like battering rams. Once she’s settled into Belinda and Norman’s home, Solange spends much of her time tormenting and/or manipulating Belinda, loudly apologizing for making, as she puts it, an “M-E-double S” whenever she soils or wets herself, which is frequently.

There’s a faint whiff of “Rosemary’s Baby” here, as if Solange might want Belinda’s child for some occult purpose, but the suggestion doesn’t go anywhere.

It’s the Eggers brothers who seem to have the real case of incontinence. They’re never quite able to contain themselves when there’s an opportunity to show Solange, say, sitting in a puddle of urine or smearing her own feces on the walls. Yet this advertisement for Febreze is hardly the stuff of nightmares.

“Fear is the beginning of knowledge,” Solange warns Belinda — and us — apropos of nothing. If that’s true, then this largely scare-free affair will leave anyone foolish enough to buy a ticket no wiser than they were when they entered — and probably in need of a shower.

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Rated R for coarse language, some violent and disturbing content, brief sexuality and nudity. 94 minutes.