Saw The Brood, a straightforward Cronenberg film. The plot follows a man whose wife is undergoing some kind of therapy at the hands of a deeply creepy therapist who practices an experimental form of therapy which produces stigmata and cancerous growths, in typical Cronenberg fashion. The man is fighting with his wife (by proxy of the therapist) for custody of his daughter. Meanwhile, horrid little creatures are killing the man's family. the two are connected of course, and this is revealed in a spectacular body-horror sequence near the end of the film.
The daughter, either due to the limitations of the child-actress, or due to directorial intent, remains almost completely blank-faced throughout the proceedings. She inscrutably watches some of the murders, gazing impassively and then crying, again for inscrutable reasons. The film, I believe, is exploiting fears of fatherhood. A mysterious creature is manifested from a woman who is so strange that in this film she is literally insane.
The film is fairly short and, like I say, mostly typical Cronenberg. There's body horror, mysterious figures of authority, a put-upon protagonist and an ambiguously gay assistant at one point (or if not gay, then at any rate he has that weird super-calm going on that a lot of artsy directors like. I got a gay vibe, I dunno.) It is unsurprising (well, the plot has reveals, but they're not so shocking.) The film's not scary so much as creepy and weird. About what I expected. Not bad, mind you, just not Cronenberg's best work.
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