Chromosome 3

The Brood is undoubtedly the most personal movie Cronenberg ever made : we all know the film describes Cronenberg's vision of his own divorce (and the custody of his daughter Cassandra) ; at that time, his then-wife belonged to what he thought was a cult and he did kidnap his own daughter in order to protect her. Thus The Brood is full of rage, vengeance and death wish… It is a truly frightening story and, in its own way, a candid vision of one's personal tragedy. It seems to be a tale from the Grimm brothers, and, at the same time, a reflection on the powerful link between body and spirit. The script is surprisingly complex and rich, even if, in the end, there is definitely something childish in the movie, but in a positive way: the childish belief that "thoughts can kill" only tempered by the final sequence, when we understand that this little girl, so cruelly abused, will eventually reproduce what her mother developed. The image of this mother (Samantha Eggar at her best, revealing her tortured body that evokes a Roman goddess) is one of the most terrifying one in world cinema. The Brood is a key to understand one of the Cronenberg's major themes: the uncanny… How what is closest to us, family, mother, grandparents, might suddenly become the ultimate horror. What frightens us is not outlandish or alien, on the contrary, it's always part of our intimate universe (as in Videodrome).

I really enjoyed David Cronenberg's film called The Brood. It is about a woman who is being cared for by an eccentric psychologist called Dr. Raglan(Oliver Reed). Who uses theatrical techniques to breach the psychological blocks in his patients. When their six year old daughter comes back from a visit with her mother and is covered with bruises the father Frank Carveth attempts to stop his his wife from seeing their daughter. But the psychologist Dr. Raskin will not stop his wife from seeing the girl. whilst this is happening his daughter's teacher is is attacked by two strange looking deformed children. Her father starts to believe that it is to do with Dr. Rankin and a psychotherapy cult which he may have something to do with it. This film was quite disturbing at times. I thought that Oliver Reed played a very good part in the film.

A great early film from the one and only, "Baron of Blood."

A husband is going through a hard time in his life when he must care for his daughter after his wife was sent away to a mental institution. The doctor running the institution is respected in his field, but controversial in his methods and there is a smell of something foul in the air. Things only get worse for the husband when his in-laws are killed some strange little monsters and his daughter winds up with scars after visiting her mother in the hospital. Added to that the doctor refuses to talk about the man's wife and he seems to treat her as somewhat of a prized patient giving her special care. He goes, on his own to investigate and discovers the horror behind everything that happened... The Brood.

The story is told in a very classical sense of the word horror, almost like Poe with a slow beginning, a sense of doubt and confusion in the middle, and a shocker and a kicker of an ending. And, as all good horror, there is some great visceral metaphor mixed in to the story. With this film David Cronenberg put himself on the road to the ranks of the horror film-making elite. 8/10

Rated R: violence, gore, and some profanity

Huge Cronenberg fan, but I gotta ask if i'm not as "disturbed" by this movie as everyone else, what does that say about me? I gotta be real, it was pretty boring. Then when it became "Cronenberg-ish" toward the end, it was sort of too late for me. 10 minutes do not a make a movie, and it was pretty hard for me to stay interested through most of it. The famous scene at the end just doesn't make up for it, sorry. Also it seems people defend it because of the fact that this story mirrored what he was going through in his personal life at the time and is sort of a metaphor with what he went through with his wife. As a movie watcher, I should not care nor have to know about that going into the movie, because it alters your perception of what to expect.

Sometimes writers and directors just have to be given a chance to be boring. Some stories just can not give you the goods from beginning to end. The brood is a film that cannot put all the cards on the table right away. Cronenberg is as always exploring issues within the horror format that are usually ignored for simple baseless gore. While the plot is not going to make a lick of sense to someone without a dark imagination it is very inventive.

I can't say for sure but serious horror fans may note that the later half of this film could easily stand along many the stories in Clive Barker's books of blood. Cronenberg I think can take some credit in inspiring later works from the horror prince who would explore a lot of these issues with a little more supernatural zeal. Isn't great that Cronenberg played a serial killer for Barker in Nightbreed!

The film is slow out of the gates for sure but Oliver Reed puts in a strange and compelling performance as the weird doctor. Samatha Eggar was very brave in her performce as the brood's disturbed mother. While some of the scenes with the brood children alone in the world look silly like everything else in the film there is a pay-off in the last half hour.

If you give up early on this film you will really miss out because the last half hour is where cronenberg packs everything in. Truly vile gore, full on madness of characters and spine chilling terror for the daughter.

For serious horror fans only.