The Brood

(1979) dir. David Cronenberg
viewed: 10/28/08

As I was watching The Brood, I had several moments of deja vu, but I don’t think that I’d actually seen it before.  Some parts seemed more familiar than others.  It’s early Cronenberg, when he was still obsessed with the body and disease and grotesqueries.  Not necessarily his best, but still quite good.

With his more recent success with more naturalistic crime dramas like A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007), Cronenberg has moved away from the gruesome science fiction horror of his early work.  While still quite violent and brutal, the narratives stay within the natural world, not one of perverse nightmares and fantasy.

The Brood is about psychosis and psychiatry.  Psychiatry that is more therapy than medication.  The embodiment of horrific abuse, repressed anger delved into and unleashed in an embodiment, a violent, vindictive embodiment.  The story is about a father, whose ex-wife is the super-disturbed patient in Oliver Reed’s isolated, radical treatment facility.  While the father fears his ex-wife, trying to protect their daughter, Reed’s treatments unleash a beast, an Id, if you will, not unlike Walter Pidgeon’s Id beast in Forbidden Planet (1956).  It’s just that what is released in The Brood is deformed midget children, dressed in brightly-colored snowsuits.

I mean, what inspired this vision of horror exactly?  Was Cronenberg taking his kids to school when he saw all the little ones dressed in these puffy, colorful outfits when he thought, “Jeez, wouldn’t it be scary if they were little vicious monsters under all that cuteness?”

It’s well-constructed, and the film develops to a powerful shock moment at the end of the film.  Cronenberg’s interest in the body and diseases played out a lot in his early films, Shivers (1975), Rabid (1977), even up through The Fly (1986).  It’s an interesting trope, particularly as the character Jan Hartog describes it (a great, hilarious cameo performance), about the lymphatic system and cancer, someone whose therapy has deformed and poisoned him.  It’s rich theoretical material, no doubt.  Perhaps more interesting to consider, than to actually have a visceral reaction to.