My goal is to watch every David Cronenberg film so when The Brood recently became available on DVD from Netflix, I moved it to the top of my queue. The Brood isn’t one of Cronenberg’s best though The Brood clearly belongs in his body horror period.
The Brood is about a separated couple with a young daughter who looks like an extra from Village of the Damned. The father is caring for the daughter, and the mother is under an experimental and controversial mental treatment from a morally ambiguous doctor who looks just like Peter Dinklage. The father decides to stop visitation. Murderous shenanigans ensue, and the targets are anyone that the mother has a problem with, but she has an alibi. Who is responsible?
Honestly the doctor is the most interesting part of The Brood. He plays the domineering father/husband/doctor to help his patients vent their deeply buried anger, but it does not seem like it takes the doctor much effort to do so. He definitely seems like he gets off on the dynamic and control, but just when you think that you have him pegged, he turns on a dime. I didn’t buy it. If you knowingly create an environment for monsters to grow and thrive, he would not suddenly care about the child’s welfare, especially when he didn’t before and wanted visitation to continue.
Usually Cronenberg has a wicked and demented sense of humor. The Brood has a lot of inherently absurd scenes that could have benefitted from a tongue in cheek approach like the Chucky franchise, but Cronenberg decided to play it straight. What he does get is a primal horror of the potential havoc that can be wreaked by tiny beings that you can’t reason with. What he was probably going for was the unreasonable rage of a crazy ex, but it felt like he just missed the mark. Even greats like Cronenberg aren’t perfect, but The Brood is worth your time if you’re a fan just don’t expect to be blown away.