October Horror 2011: Day 22 - The Brood

Released in 1979, The Brood was directed by David Cronenberg, probably best known for movies like The Fly, Videodrome, and Scanners.  This is the first entry in "Around the World" week and takes place in North America.

The Brood tells the story of a experimental psychotherapy technique developed by a psychologist named Dr. Raglin, who is an expert on repressed rage.  The technique, called psychoplasmics, works by forcing the subject to face traumatic experiences or emotions to a depth that causes physical manifestations on the body, which are cleared by "going through" the experience and leaving it behind.

The main character's wife is in therapy undergoing this treatment, while engaged in a bitter custody battle over their daughter, Candice.  Convinced the wife is beating the daughter during visits to the hospital, he tries to uncover what really goes on during the visits and the therapy sessions.  While he investigates Dr. Raglin, anyone who's offended or injured the wife begins dying.  They're being murdered by creepy, mutant children in snowsuits.  The body count extends to include the wife's parents and a school teacher who Candice bonds to as a surrogate mother.

This movie isn't nearly as bizarre and mind-bending as most of Cronenberg's other films, and not quite as downright disturbing and disgusting.  Instead, he favors more of a mystery story that slowly unravels the origin of the "Brood" of murder-children.  The ending bit is pretty disgusting, but is more of a one time shock than the constant unrelenting bombardment of most Cronenberg.

I enjoyed it well enough for what it was, and the mystery was fun to follow.  Probably worth checking out if you're into the whole "Body-horror" thing, or need to give someone an intro because this is sort of "Body-horror Lite".

Tomorrow we travel to South American and watch: And soon the Darkness.