The Brood - 1979
This review may contain spoilers.
With The Brood, David Cronenberg stepped boldly into the second phase of his career. Armed with a much larger budget at his disposal and the consequent higher production value, old Crone added another tool to his director's toolbox. This time around he proved himself to be a master of atmosphere and tone.
For that is precisely what The Brood largely is. It's a mood piece with an aura that is so mysterious and engaging it makes our hair stand on end. Slow burn suspense runs from pillar to post in this picture. The cinematography and (now long-time collaborator) Howard Shore, whose score is magnificent here, only reinforce this palpable dread.
But, impressively, Cronenberg marries this atmosphere to well-trodden ideas from his other works. Therefore, once again we see the tie between mind and body. Spirit and flesh. In this case, the key revelation concerns physical manifestations of psychic energy. The Brood hints at this connection with the body boils on various characters throughout the picture’s runtime, but it smartly uses the doctor’s character (Oliver Reed in an unbelievable performance) as a sort of red herring. So, we ask ourselves: Is he the villain here? For what purpose is he holding this poor girl?
Of course the actual answer is far more disturbing. It is, in the end, the woman who is the total “freak.” And those insatiable, hungry for blood little demon midgets? Oh those are just the rage-birthed babies who form a brood on a mission to destroy a little girl. This has one of the wildest final 10 minutes of any film I’ve ever seen. (Great endings, not to be confused with happy ones, are of course another Cronenberg staple). With such a memorably graphic and unexpected denouement, a much glossier look, riveting tension, and a better score to boot, Cronenberg may just have landed his first great picture.
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