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Rating: Cronenberg's cinema is synonymous with claustrophobia, inner turmoil, and sensory shock. "The Brood" is another classic example of this.
The mental power of the individual is seen in the film as the very creator of matter and flesh, of which it constitutes a kind of molecular extension. Cronenberg's philosophy represents a Copernican revolution of being precisely because the psyche becomes the founder and, at the same time, the molder of bodily substance.
The process through which such a shocking result is achieved in "The Brood" is the so-called "psychoplasmics", an innovative therapy developed by Dr. Raglan, apparently for the treatment of mental patients, but in reality, designed to overturn traditional ontological conceptions through the birth of a new religion with the mind at its peak, not as something boxed within the body but as the creator of the very body itself.
Emotions such as anger, frustration, pain, or revenge can, thus, finally take shape and violently act through fruits born from the body by the will of the psyche. Dr. Raglan's experiments find their ultimate expression in Nola, obsessed with the desire to regain the love of her ex-husband and her child. To give form to such an obsession, Nola, confined in Dr. Raglan's laboratory, becomes a queen bee that gives life to a series of human-like body products, which satisfy their mother's instincts with ferocity and in total unconsciousness.
Faced with this striking and disturbing revelation, all the events related to Nola's husband, Frank, and his will to protect little Candice from her mother's alleged abuses, assume a decidedly marginal role. "The Brood" is perhaps one of the lesser-known works of the Canadian knight but not one of the less important.
Particular mention, for example, should be given to the overture scene where Dr. Raglan experiments with his psychoplasmics on one of his patients publicly on a theater stage, charged with a unique pathos due to the intense verbal confrontation between the two.
The film subsequently develops along the usual canons of his cinematography, featuring gloomy and desolate environments, bloodier scenes aiming to disgust the viewer, the sense of oppression derived from the not particularly colorful photography, leading to the surprising and chilling finale.
After all, it's a David Cronenberg film and I don't think there's any need to add anything else.
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