The Brood
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Movie Reviews of The Brood
Movie Review: An abused girl's traumatic experiences...
Summary: 2 Stars
When a man picks up his daughter from a weekend visits with her mother who is institutionalized in a private clinic he notices bruises and bite marks on her back. This is seems to be linked to the psychiatrist at the mother's clinic, who opposes the idea of removing the daughter from the visits. The father then attempts to prevent the mother from seeing the daughter, but finds out that he will most likely lose custody of the daughter if he continues to press the issue into court. Squeezed in between a rock and hard place the father begins to gather evidence that could aid him in a possible custody battle in court. However, this is interrupted by the mysterious murder of the daughter's grandmother. The Brood has an interesting idea, but the story falls flat as the characters make dim and predictable choices. In the end, Cronenberg does not create a story of disturbing suspense as he did in Dead Ringers (1988) and Spider (2002), but he does create a story that equals many other poor horror films.Movie Review: Not that good
Summary: 2 Stars
just watched it a couple nights ago. aside from a couple decent performances, a few intriguing ideas and sufficient blood during the death scenes, this film was barely watchable.
i'm not a huge Cronenberg fan, but like some of his movies. i rank The Brood towards the bottom of his catalog.
D
Movie Review: A hugh miss with David Cronenberg
Summary: 2 Stars
I collect David Cronenberg films. I especially like his style and subject matter he chooses to put on film. With that said, I purchased this DVD w/o initially seeing the movie. I did not like the movie feeling it had poor production values , poorly written and acted. I can not recommend it with a positive feeling.Movie Review: Just plain boring, and totally overhyped. CONTAINS SPOILERS!!
Summary: 1 Stars
In 1973, director Nicholas Roeg took a Daphne Du Maurier story about a strained family situation, added a child in a red coat and some superlative direction, cast wonderful, talented actors such as Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, and produced a seminal and classic piece of seventies horror, the unmissable "Don't Look Now".
Six years later, Cronenberg - obviously, oh so obviously having been influenced by the starkly pared-down imagery and understated elegance of the Roeg picture - decided to put his own markedly different spin on a terribly similar theme, with disasterously boring results.
To synopsise the plot: Frank Carveth's estranged wife is crazy, and undergoing unconventional therapy at her psychiatrist's controversial institute. Suspecting her of abusing their daughter, he removes her from his wife's care, to the strenuous objections of her shrink. Several people connected to wifey's emotionally crippling past begin to show up dead, and Carveth finds himself fighting to save his daughter from her crazy mother's 'other' set of kids.
So it's David Cronenberg. So what?
Performances and direction, as well as screenplay, are all simply mundane. There's barely a shred of the sleek, polished talent we have come to recognise as David Cronenberg, and what we have instead is a sort of mishmash of some of the better aspects from classic American horror movies, as seen through the obviously tired eyes of the writer/director. It's almost got the sense of isolation of 'The Shining', but there are too many incidental characters. It's almost got the same sense of murder-by-numbers as 'Hallowe'en', but lacks the decisive action of that movie. It's close to the stark imagery and sense of motherhood-gone-awry as 'Carrie' (and even the lead actress bears a striking resemblance to Piper Laurie!), but Samantha Eggar's performance is too overblown.
Makeup effects, too, are over-ambitious for the time and fail to create any sense of impact or drama, in that they just look silly. Of course, you could say the same for 'The Exorcist', nowadays, but where that film still has the incredible strength of Ellen Burstyn's and Linda Blair's performances, all 'The Brood' has to go on is some deformed alien-figures that hiss a lot. It's not good.
In short, where a movie matters most, 'The Brood' fails wholly to deliver, instead regaling us with 90 or so minutes of unfulfilling cinema.
A note on the subtext: It's difficult to feel any sort of respect for the social commentary contained herein. Sure, topics like the state of the Nuclear Family and the negative effects of a Mother's love are riveting things, when handled properly. Unfortunately, when the package and presentation are so obviously hollow and overdone, who could care less about subtext?
I couldn't.
Movie Review: 1 star out of 4
Summary: 1 Stars
The Bottom Line:
A ridiculous (and ridiculously-bad) horror film rife with plot holes, poor characterization, and ludicrous scenes, The Brood represents Cronenberg at his absolute worst; really pretty terrible, this is a film recommended to no one except people who want insight inside the Canadian horror master's twisted psyche.