The Brood Blu-Ray Review

 

The Brood is one of those times I have had in my worst ever list for a long time. However I hadn’t watched the film in the better part of a decade so I was willing to re-watch it but my opinion hasn’t improved. It was written and directed sadly by one of my all-time favourite directors David Cronenberg aka. the man that saved the Canadian film industry. However this film should have killed his career it was made during his divorce from his 1st wife Margaret Hindson and the difficult custody battle he had at the time. He has said many a time it’s his Kramer Vs. Kramer and his anger towards his ex-wife really gives the film a deeply unpleasant atmosphere.

The film is about this guy called Frank Carveth (Art Hindle) whose wife Nola (Samantha Eggar) is currently under the eye of psychotherapist Dr. Hal Raglan (played by everyone’s favourite alcoholic Oliver Reed). They are also currently in a midst of a custody battle over their daughter despite her being under lock and key in a mental institute. Frank discovers scratches on the back of his daughter so he naturally assumes it’s his psycho wife when his daughter visits her every week. He confronts the Doc but denies anything is happening. He soon discovers her parents were abusive and neglectful who refuse to do anything for their daughter out of shame and denial.

The film takes a strange turn when Nola’s mother is murdered when she is visited by the granddaughter. It seems to be a child who committed the murder but we soon find out it’s these weird deformed midgets in red coats which is clearly ripped off from Nicolas Reog’s Don’t Look Now. The film is a total bore from its beginning scene, which is pretentious bit of psychoanalysis by Oliver Reed with a sexually repressed patient to the “shocking ending” which you see coming from a mile away.

The film also fails in it’s portrayal of it’s female characters with the wife being a murderous psychopath (not surprising considering his personal turmoil at the time of filming) and the goody two shoes teacher but when it gets it hard for her she runs away. Cronenberg has never been brilliant at writing female characters but in this case just shows his misogyny at the time. The film also is a piece of the always-problematic paedophobic (fear of children) genre of horror films such as The Exorcist (which is a great film), Village of The Damned and even shit art-house fare like We Need to talk about Kevin.

The Brood is a nasty bleak piece of work from one of the masters of nasty and bleak films (just see the brilliant Cosmopolis) but the biggest flaw is it’s just really boring and predictable. David Cronenberg hadn’t still found his cinematic voice and wouldn’t till Scanners and even more so in Videodrome. Cronenberg’s 70s films are fascinating at times but seriously lack the brilliance and importance of his more arty films that follow from Videodrome onwards. People like Mark Kermode and Kim Newman remain fanatical about his early films but in reality it’s worth starting with Scanners.

★☆☆☆☆

Ian Schultz

Rating: 18
BD Release date: 8th July 2013 (UK)
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Olivier Reed,Samantha Eggar, Art Hindle
Buy The Brood: [Blu-ray]