Classic Movie Review : The Brood (1979)
My mom tried to ban horror films from our household on principle. "You're going to be scared and you'll be on your own. I refuse to deal with self-induced fright," she used to say. Bless her heart, she never watched horror in her life and her imaginary construction of what they might be turned out to be way worse than what most of them are. But David Cronenberg's early movie The Brood is so fucked up and in-your-face, it's probably what she had in mind when she psyched herself out of loving horror.
The Brood tells the story of Frank Carveth (Art Hindle), a man fighting for the custody of his daughter with his mentally ill ex-wife (Samantha Eggar) who's undergoing an experimental therapy where patients release their suppressed emotions through bodily changes. When young Candice (Cindy Hinds) comes home with bruises and scratches from a visit to her mother, Frank starts investigating the nature of the therapy she's following and discovered something supremely fucked up. Because David Cronenberg.
Middle-Aged Horror
This is some real shit, even by David Cronenberg's impossibly high standards for horror. The premise of The Brood is both deranged and a seemingly normal reflection of the fears of a more conservative time. New forms of experimental therapy were emerging in the sixties and folks were worried of what they could do to the human psyche, prompting David Cronenberg to have a very David Cronenberg reflection: "what if psychological trauma could mutate the body, like inflicting burns or even cancer?"
But these mutations are ancillary. What David Cronenberg really wanted to explore with The Brood is parenthood. That choice you make that changes your freakin’ life overnight, triggers all sorts of deep-rooted insecurities and that you can’t ever take back. As if it wasn’t as terrifying on its own, Cronenberg wonders: "what if parenthood could turn even MORE wrong than it naturally can THROUGH THERAPY?” That’s why I think it's a film crafted to terrify people who had to consider this choice already.
That’s why I like to think of The Brood as Hereditary before Hereditary. It’s a film about generational trauma and standard life choices. On paper, there’s nothing out of the ordinary about the breakdown of Frank and Nola Carveth’s couple, but materializing her grievances about motherhood in a string of literal deformed resentment babies is fucking terrifying. Creepy kids do nothing for me usually, but these little shits embody a volatile, unspoken rage few people are capable to admit to themselves.
Daytime Scares (Sort Of)
Another brutal aspect of The Brood is its complete and utter lack of conventional horror atmosphere. There are no shadows, no dim lighting. Everything is filmed super flat in the most common accomodations possible. It’s one thing not seeing what’s lurking in the dark. It’s another thing being overwhelmed by tiny, creepy creatures you can fully appreciate the grotesquerie of under the cheapo neon lighting of your own home. You should be able to rationalize it under such comforting circumstance, but you can’t.
The Brood is not the first movie that weaponized its own lack of artifice. The Exorcist did it like, six or seven years prior, but I believe it’s underappreciated how much more disturbing David Cronenberg's body horror is when you're not dressing it up. It’s so fucking unnerving to witness a grotesque outgrowth of the otherwise mind-numbingly banal. It creates a mood of its own, not unlike Ari Aster's contrast between inner darkness and beautiful suburban skies did in 2018. In horror, less is more.
*
Seriously, I haven't been this freaked out by a horror movie in a couple of years. The Brood's raw, but highly allegorical horror has bulldozed its way into my brain stem with no regards for my mental health. This is the movie your parents were intuitively afraid of when you were a kid. Any attempt to make it more atmospheric by tweaking the lighting or the editing would've made it automatically less scary. This has to be one of the grossest, most psychologically devient films ever made and I loved it.
