The Brood |
  • Canada • 1979 • 92m •   • Directed by: David Cronenberg. • Starring: Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar, Art Hindle, Henry Beckman, Nuala Fitzgerald, Cindy Hinds, Susan Hogan, Gary McKeehan, Michael Magee, Robert A. Silverman, Joseph Shaw, Larry Solway, Reiner Schwarz. • Music by: Howard Shore.      A man's wife is under the care of an eccentric psychiatrist who uses innovative and theatrical techniques to breach the psychological blocks in his patients. When their daughter comes back from a visit with mom and she's covered with bruises and welts, the father attempts to bar his wife from seeing the daughter, but faces resistance from the secretive psychiatrist. Meanwhile, the wife's mother and father are attacked by deformed children, and the husband begins to suspect a connection with the psychiatrist's methods.
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Review:
It's an early work by David Cronenberg, a filmmaker who does not simply make science fiction and horror movies. He uses the most downreaching, internal, abstract emotions to flow through a story of dark, often supernatural horror. There is always an indescribability to his films, including each and every one of them, when it comes to their pace, their elusive effect, and the direction of their stories. I was disappointed, however, as someone who knows Cronenberg's later films very well, to find The Brood to not have that mysterious emotional effect through any of those indescribable qualities that are usually present in his work. In fact, for a film which is all about emotion and its guises, it's quite cold. Each of the central characters is completely wooden and so is the film-making itself.
At the same time as his characters' bodies are forever augmenting, decomposing or both, Cronenberg's art has its own inventive mutative fluctuation, and here the low-budget exploitation crust casts off for a chilly, detached arrangement not unlike Bergman's Face to Face a few years earlier. The plot would outshine The Bob Newhart Show as the recognized '70s psycho-jargon send-up if not for Cronenberg's fascinating intricacy and resolute implementation, an growth and fine-tuning of his texture for psychosomatic horror.
The Brood isn't a great film by any means due not only to its lacking of feeling that is shocking considering its credentials but also to typical cheesy sequences of suspense and violence. However, I will always look at it as a particularly interesting piece of sci-fihorror camp that stands out against the rest.
Review by jzappa from the Internet Movie Database.
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