I asked to review the new Blu-ray release of the horror/sci-fi outing The Brood because I have never seen the movie, and I thought it was high time I did. Why have I never seen it? On the one hand, because I’m not that much of a horror fan – although I do try to familiarise myself with a fair few of the well-regarded classics of this genre – and on the other because I’ve always found Cronenberg’s movies to be weird at best (Dead Ringers) and repulsive at worst (Videodrome). He may have cleaned up his act more recently; I thought A History of Violence was very decent, and while I haven’t seen them yet as of this writing, I have high expectations for both Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method.
But The Brood harkens back to his early days. It is the movie he did just before Scanners, his real commercial breakthrough. Oliver Reed plays Dr. Raglan, a psychologist who has invented a new kind of therapy called psychoplasmics. It involves role-playing; the therapist plays the role of an important figure in the patient’s life (almost always a family member), and the patient must pretend that he or she is talking to that person. It is slightly creepy; almost a sort of hypnosis, but it is interesting and clever enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if something very similar was being used by some psychologists today, now that role-playing is so fashionable.
Frank Carveth’s wife, Nola, is enrolled in Dr. Raglan’s experimental psychoplasmics course, as she has a history of mental instability. Frank is taking care of their six-year-old daughter, Candy, and allowing Nola to see Candy on a regular basis. The source of Nola’s emotional problems are never really explained, but it is strongly intimated that she has them from her mother, who had similar problems. What we are talking about here, then, is a theme of parents passing their various issues on to their children. As someone once said, “first parents give you your life, and then they try giving you their life.”
The nature of these issues is never specified, but it’s nothing good. And in this movie, the malignant emotions are given corporeal form. Eerie children-like dwarfs turn up to kill certain people with mallets, and the audience have guessed long before the end that these deformed creatures are a physical manifestation of rage. Somehow, Dr. Raglan’s psychoplasmics and Nola’s anger issues (centered, of course, on her family) combine to enable Nola to create raging killer midgets who eventually abduct young Candy and makes her live with them.
Most of the characters are well-acted, including Oliver Reed’s Dr. Raglan, but the good doctor is also one of the weak links in the narrative, as he is very cold and clinical, always seeming to hide something. Is this just his insistence on doctor/patient confidentiality, or…? His character and motivation never really seem to take off – or maybe it’s just that Oliver Reed is simply too substantial an actor for such a thinly developed role?
I am also forced to comment that it all moves a bit too slowly – and doesn’t have enough sci-fi in it. The viscous symbolism would be interesting if anything specific were being symbolised, but it appears to be nothing but some kind of generic anxiety/anger/rage/evil. Poor anger management. Of course the point about parents passing their traumas and neuroses on to their children is well taken, but to my mind there isn’t quite enough story here to entirely flesh out this point, and several elements feel contrived or incoherent. If Dr. Raglan is not a deceptive bastard after all (although we don’t actually know whether he is or not), how did he allow things to get so far out of hand? Why do his efforts to cure Nola just make her condition much worse? I think this story would have made more sense if Nola was just brooding at home, not getting help, rather than at a therapeutic institution, getting apparently incompetent help. Or it’s possible there are layers in the story that whizzed right past me. Who knows?
The Brood is out on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK on July 8. This review is based on a Blu-ray screener which is quite beautiful. There are several featurettes about the production and the actor, including some good interviews. A great package for any fan of this movie.
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Art Hindle, Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar, Cindy Hinds and others
Runtime: 92 min.
Country: Canada
Film Rating: 
Blu-ray Rating:
