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While a woman receives a radical new form of psychotherapy, her estranged husband notices that a series of violent murders may be connected to this therapy.
David Cronenberg does not make pleasant films. His filmography's most iconic images include everything from exploding heads to vagina-shaped chest wounds to a man slowly and painfully turning into a giant fly. Even by the standards already set by the films I've seen of his, there's something particularly nasty about The Brood, if only because of its subtext being more informed by his own real-life family troubles than his usual cold and clinical polemics on whatever topic happens to take his fancy at a given time (though I suppose that this film does involve some criticism of alternative medicine and therapy in the process). The method of therapy shown in The Brood involves a psychiatrist (Oliver Reed) engaging in role-playing sessions with patients that somehow result in them channeling their repressed psychological trauma into the formation of visible physiological changes to their bodies such as lesions all over one patient's torso or even a possible case of lymphoma for another patient. As intriguing a concept as this is, it's all just background for the film's main plot - that one of Reed's patients (Samantha Eggar) is also in the middle of a separation from her husband (Art Hindle), who is also concerned that she may be acting physically abusive towards their young daughter whenever she visits. As if this isn't a tense enough situation already, there's also the matter of the murderous mutant child that shows up before too long...
The Brood is definitely recognisable as early Cronenberg with its late-1970s Canadian kitsch sort of (but not really) mitigating the horror that the film tries to communicate through a combination of twisted practical effects and the uncanny circumstances that produce and surround them. The extremely personal nature of the family drama at the heart of the matter proves a strong backbone to a film where the brevity means that the creepy children show up quickly and yet you're constantly left wondering just what Reed's shifty psychiatrist is really up to when his bizarre therapy starts having dire consequences. It's definitely easy to question whether or not Cronenberg's decision to bring his real-life issues into the texture of the film might have problematic implications and end up turning the film into "My Ex-Wife Is Crazy: The Movie" (especially as it reaches its grotesquely troubling conclusion), but given how much time is devoted to examining the cyclical effects of parental abuse influencing the film's narrative it does come across as a strangely empathetic treatment of the topic that doesn't limit Eggar's character to being a deranged harpy nor does it make Hindle's character into a straight hero either. In this regard, it's a step up from the hyper-sexual nihilism of Shivers and recognisable as a significant step forward for the filmmaker towards his best works, plus it's a solid film in its own right.
#22 - The Brood
David Cronenberg, 1979
David Cronenberg, 1979
While a woman receives a radical new form of psychotherapy, her estranged husband notices that a series of violent murders may be connected to this therapy.
David Cronenberg does not make pleasant films. His filmography's most iconic images include everything from exploding heads to vagina-shaped chest wounds to a man slowly and painfully turning into a giant fly. Even by the standards already set by the films I've seen of his, there's something particularly nasty about The Brood, if only because of its subtext being more informed by his own real-life family troubles than his usual cold and clinical polemics on whatever topic happens to take his fancy at a given time (though I suppose that this film does involve some criticism of alternative medicine and therapy in the process). The method of therapy shown in The Brood involves a psychiatrist (Oliver Reed) engaging in role-playing sessions with patients that somehow result in them channeling their repressed psychological trauma into the formation of visible physiological changes to their bodies such as lesions all over one patient's torso or even a possible case of lymphoma for another patient. As intriguing a concept as this is, it's all just background for the film's main plot - that one of Reed's patients (Samantha Eggar) is also in the middle of a separation from her husband (Art Hindle), who is also concerned that she may be acting physically abusive towards their young daughter whenever she visits. As if this isn't a tense enough situation already, there's also the matter of the murderous mutant child that shows up before too long...
The Brood is definitely recognisable as early Cronenberg with its late-1970s Canadian kitsch sort of (but not really) mitigating the horror that the film tries to communicate through a combination of twisted practical effects and the uncanny circumstances that produce and surround them. The extremely personal nature of the family drama at the heart of the matter proves a strong backbone to a film where the brevity means that the creepy children show up quickly and yet you're constantly left wondering just what Reed's shifty psychiatrist is really up to when his bizarre therapy starts having dire consequences. It's definitely easy to question whether or not Cronenberg's decision to bring his real-life issues into the texture of the film might have problematic implications and end up turning the film into "My Ex-Wife Is Crazy: The Movie" (especially as it reaches its grotesquely troubling conclusion), but given how much time is devoted to examining the cyclical effects of parental abuse influencing the film's narrative it does come across as a strangely empathetic treatment of the topic that doesn't limit Eggar's character to being a deranged harpy nor does it make Hindle's character into a straight hero either. In this regard, it's a step up from the hyper-sexual nihilism of Shivers and recognisable as a significant step forward for the filmmaker towards his best works, plus it's a solid film in its own right.