The Brood: David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg's The Brood is one of his sickest and most disturbing films. But that doesn't necessarily make it one of his best. Allow me to explain. The Brood follows Frank Carveth, a loving father who is gripped in a terrible legal battle with his insane wife over possession of their daughter, Candice. His wife, Nola, is undergoing an experimental new treatment designed by psychotherapist Hal Raglan of the Somafree Institute. To make a long and difficult explanation as brief and simple as possible, all you have to know is that Raglan's treatment is causing Nola to undergo psychosomatic mutations. As a result, Nola gives "birth" to a small army of *sigh* psychic midgets. Yes, you read that right...an army of psychic midgets. What Nola doesn't know is that her psychic link with her "offspring" causes them to seek out an brutally murder anybody that she doesn't like. Eventually, Nola kidnaps Candice and holds her hostage among the ranks of her homicidal lollipop guild. It's up to Frank to distract Nola while Hal tries and rescues Candice. Now, I'll be fair and give credit where credit is due: the special effects in this film are superb. As with any of Cronenberg's films, the true horror comes from manipulations and mutations of the human body. The scene where Nola rips a new "child" from a pyschoplasmically-induced external womb and starts to lick the blood and placental chunks off his body is chillingly nauseating. The problem is that the rest of the film fails to live up to the horror of this scene. The acting is stale, the story is confusing and clunky, and despite what we may have learned from Don't Look Now, homicidal midgets dressed in red aren't automatically frightening. This is an unpleasant, dirty film. But, hey, I can hardly complain. Those are the exact reasons why so many horror-hounds love Cronenberg's films from the 70s.

5/10