The Brood (David Cronenberg, 1979)

Though The Brood's critical reputation has improved to such an extent that it was recently canonized by the Criterion Collection, contemporary reviews were mostly unkind. Mainstream criticism in the '70s, '80s, and '90s tended to summarily dismiss the horror genre in blanket, knee-jerk fashion (with the rare exception, such as Halloween or The Exorcist) as juvenile, crassly commercial, exploitative, not artistic, and/or immoral, whether it be a generic slasher ripoff or a thoughtful, creative film like Cronenberg's. Just look at the difference in the way Roger Ebert, for example, reviewed The Brood and the more measured and positive way he wrote about Cronenberg's later films. (He even called fans of The Brood "reprehensible" in his review. Settle down, buddy.) Meanwhile, several academic and intellectual critics classified The Brood as a reactionary, anti-feminist film. Hardly surprising coming from the writer of this blog, I know, but I don't agree with any of this.

Cronenberg humorously described The Brood as his attempt to make an honest version of Kramer vs. Kramer, and he's also referred to it as the only time he deliberately set out to make a classic horror film. Inspired by the ugly, contentious divorce from his first wife, Margaret Hindson, in 1977 and the bitter custody battle for their child that followed, The Brood is a sad, angry film about divorce and parenting from a mostly male point of view, but it's hardly an anti-woman, anti-mother revenge screed, as many critics painted it in 1979. (Cronenberg's second marriage, to cinematographer/editor/producer Carolyn Cronenberg, was much happier, lasting from 1979 until her death from cancer in 2017. They had two children and worked together on several projects.)  

The Brood is about damaged people with complex feelings and, despite its chilly exterior and controlled composition, is an intensely emotional film full of rage, loss, and empathy. Cronenberg's working through a lot of heavy stuff here, but understanding and sympathy exist alongside anger, revenge, and duplicity, and the film is honest about how people process intense emotions. Divorce is intense. My parents split up when I was 25, and even though no custody battles were involved and I was an adult, it fucked me up for a decade, and I still occasionally feel the aftershocks in my forties. I'd like to point out amidst this heavy discussion that it's also a pretty great horror film about murderous mutant children manifested from rage.

The splintered Toronto couple at the center of The Brood are Frank (Art Hindle) and Nola (Samantha Eggar). (Cronenberg said part of his reason for picking the two actors was because they had similar mannerisms to him and his ex-wife.) Frank has custody of their daughter Candice (Cindy Hinds) during the week. Candice spends weekends at the rural compound of controversial psychotherapist Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed), where Nola is institutionalized. Raglan has created an intense form of therapy called "psychoplasmics" in which patients turn their internal trauma into physical manifestations in role-playing sessions with Raglan. These manifestations mostly take the form of skin lesions resembling psoriasis or seborrheic dermatitis, but things are a bit more complex with Nola, who is dealing with so much anger, sadness, childhood trauma, divorce trauma, stress, and lifelong mental illness that she psychoplasmically gives birth to mutant children who are docile when she is relaxed but turn into tiny yet efficient killers when she's angry. While most of Raglan's patients are in a facility in the city, Nola and her psychoplasmic brood are isolated in the country.

Frank thinks Dr. Raglan is full of shit, but he becomes more alarmed when he sees bite marks and bruises on Candice's back. He believes Nola abused Candice and angrily confronts Dr. Raglan. Frank says he'll stop the weekend visitations, which Raglan says will seriously derail Nola's recovery. Frank does it anyway, and the mutant children begin their killing spree. As Frank tries to keep his and his daughter's life together and Nola tries to get well, more characters are introduced, including Nola's divorced, alcoholic parents, one of Candice's school teachers, an extremely Canadian police detective (he wants to help and is not suspicious), and the great Robert Silverman as a former patient of Raglan's who is now suing him, claiming, with weird growths on his neck as proof, that psychoplasmics gave him a rare cancer. (Silverman has great weirdo roles in several Cronenberg films. In addition to The Brood, he appears in Rabid, Scanners, Naked Lunch, and eXistenZ, as well as Cronenberg's episode of Friday the 13th: The Series.)

The Brood is more proof that Cronenberg is one of the finest visual stylists of the last half-century of film, and each frame is carefully composed, full of visual and emotional detail, and interesting to look at, dammit, unlike most of the trash on television and in the multiplexes. His images are never flashy or show-offy, but never pedestrian, either. The cast is mostly pretty great, with Oliver Reed and Samantha Eggar really going for it. (BTW, Reed was arrested during production after a drinking companion dared him to walk naked in the frigid Toronto weather from one bar to another and Reed accepted the challenge.) Cindy Hinds, in her first role, has some occasionally awkward line readings, but her facial expressions and screen presence are perfect for the film.

Cronenberg creates an atmosphere and tone in The Brood that just works. He makes the gray, dreary Canadian late fall/early winter visually fascinating and an appropriate physical representation of his characters' internal states. The mutant children (played by kids from a local gymnastics school) are creepy and unsettling. Howard Shore's score is tense and frightening without calling too much attention to itself. This is a great horror movie. My reprehensible ass loved it even more than when I first saw it.

Cronenberg's had a long, prolific career, but he hasn't made a movie since 2014's Maps to the Stars, and has recently expressed some skepticism that he'll ever make another one. Someone, please give Cronenberg money and a platform to do whatever he wants. (After some initial interest, Netflix recently passed on a miniseries Cronenberg wrote. Considering the volume of original programming treacle they pump out each week, this rejection seems like a prosecutable crime to me. They gave Rob fucking Schneider a show and no human has ever made it past the 10-minute mark of episode one. It's like a snuff film, but the victim is comedy.) In conclusion, David Cronenberg is great, and the present moment is stupid as hell.