The Brood
Hands up, baby, hands up!
I've reviewed a few
David Cronenberg movies before and the major constant in each movie
is physical transformation. We've seen it in The Fly and Videodrome
with scary results. Cronenberg's mental and psychological
transformations are matched to the physical thanks to fantastically
graphic special effects. His capability to combine the gruesome
special effects and tense atmosphere make for fun and scary horror
movies. Can the same be said for a movie by Cronenberg that I had
never really heard of?
The Brood is a 1979
horror movie starring Art Hindle (Paradise Falls, Dallas) as Frank
Carveth. Frank's estranged wife Nola (Samantha Eggar, Hercules,
Metalocalypse) has been receiving treatment from psychotherapist Hal
Raglan (Oliver Reed, Gladiator, Tommy). Raglan runs the Somafree
Institute where he performs an experimental form of therapy called
“psychoplasmics”. Frank allows his five-year old daughter Candice
to visit her mother at the institute and is shocked to find her
covered in bruises. Frank informs Raglan of her injuries and tells
him that he will no longer bring Candice to see her mother. Wanting
to protect Nola and her progress, Raglan intensifies her sessions
hoping to quickly solve her issues. He learns that Nola was abused by
her mother and neglected by her father, leading to her current
fragile mental state. Frank considers legal action against Raglan and
seeks out a former patient of the doctor who claims the treatment
gave him cancer. While meeting with the former patient, Candice stays
with Nola's mother, Juliana. A crashing noise is heard in the kitchen
and when Juliana goes to check, she is viciously attacked and
murdered by what appears to be a dwarf or child. The police inform
Frank of the murder and explain that Candice has been traumatized by
the incident. Nola's father Barton returns to attend Juliana's
funeral and tries to visit Nola. Raglan turns him away and Barton
plans to take revenge on Raglan. While Frank goes to check on Barton,
Candice's teacher Ruth Mayer stays at home to watch her. She answers
the phone, which has Nola on the other line. Believing that Ruth is
Frank's new love interest, Nola becomes enraged. Frank finds Barton
murdered by the same small child from before. He confronts the child
who dies during the altercation. An autopsy reveals the child has
strange deformities such as being asexual, color blind, toothless,
and without a navel, suggesting it was burn unnaturally. Raglan
quickly closes Somafree, discharging all of the patients in order to
focus only on Nola. When Candice returns to school, two
dwarf-children kill Ruth and kidnap Candice, bringing her to
Somafree. Frank learns from a discharged patient that Nola was
Raglan's “queen bee” and the children live in a shed on the
Somafree compound. When he arrives, Haglan explains to Frank that the
dwarf children come from Nola, an accident byproduct of her
psychplasmic sessions. She is telepathically linked to them as her
rage causes them to kill. Will Frank be able to save his daughter and
stop Nola before it's too late?
"But I don't wanna go to bed!"
The Brood is
probably one of Cronenberg's more straight-forward films, but that
doesn't mean it's your average horror movie. The movie is laid-out
with a good mystery, giving the audience slow drips of information.
While the slow reveal makes for a good mystery, it does feel a little
too slow at times. Things don't really pick up until the first murder
which does take a little while to get to. Any good mystery forces the
audience to question just exactly what is happening on who is to
blame and The Brood accomplishes this very well. The misdirection
with Dr. Raglan is a good plot twist as for most of the movie, I
suspected he was the villain. The slow build also creates a sense of
horror and dread as the dwarf killers are slowly revealed. They make
unnatural sounds and grunts which make the scenes more frantic and
terrifying. We don't see them right away and their unnatural natural
makes everything quite strange. The movie has a great, creepy
atmosphere thanks in part to the usage of string musical flourishes.
It's not quite the music from “Psycho”, but it's very close.
Most of the movie
is all a build to the big reveal at the end and it is quite a reveal.
As I mentioned before, most of Cronenberg's work involves physical
transformation horror. Only until the very end did we see this
signature plot device involving Nola and it's very disturbing. Without
giving too much away, the scene is both gruesome and graphic, which
forced the film to be censored in certain places. It earned the film
a spot on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments. The movie has some very
good, if a bit graphic, scenes of violence with a large amount of
blood. Most of the special effects and makeup are used on the dwaves
and on Nola at the end. Both look very good as both are
natural-looking, but distorted just enough to make the audience
uncomfortable. The acting is good and believable and Cronenberg is
able to create characters the audience cares about. Samantha Eggar is
particularly good at portraying Nola's frantic insanity. The movie
doesn't quite reach the exploitation genre, but it skirts the area
with the scenes of what appear to be children murdering adults.
That smile could light up a room
The Brood is
well-made, but there's just something about it that doesn't create
that spark of greatness found in other Cronenberg movies. Maybe it's
the straight-forward nature or the disconnected big reveal at the end
that just didn't set my world on fire. The action and violence is
good and the mystery is quite entertaining. There are some scary
scenes, but I never felt overwhelmed with fear or suspense. The movie
does contain the usual Cronenberg physical transformations, but they
don't come until the end which was disappointing. The movie has it's
good moments and is by no means bad, it just doesn't really reach the
level of his future movies. It's a good introductory movie to David
Cronenberg's work and worth a watch if you're new to him.
7/10
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