The Brood is a 1979 Canadian psychological body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar, and Art Hindle.
Written by Cronenberg after his own acrimonious divorce, he intended the screenplay as a meditation on a fractured relationship between a husband and wife who share a child, and cast Eggar and Hindle as loose facsimiles of himself and his ex-wife.
He would later state that, despite its incorporation of science fiction elements, he considered it his sole feature that most embodied a "classic horror film".
It has attracted scholarly interest from academics in the areas of film theory for its themes regarding mental illness and parenthood.
Dr. Hal Raglan, a psychotherapist, encourages patients with mental disturbances to let go of their suppressed emotions through physiological changes to their bodies in a technique he calls "psychoplasmics".
One of his patients is Nola Carveth, a severely disturbed woman who is legally embattled with her husband Frank for custody of their five-year-old daughter Candice.
Frank, intending to invalidate Raglan's methods, questions Jan Hartog, a former patient who is dying of psychoplasmic-induced lymphoma.
Juliana tells Candice that Nola was frequently hospitalized as a child and often exhibited strange unexplained wheals on her skin that doctors were unable to diagnose.
Frank invites Candice's teacher, Ruth Mayer, home for dinner to discuss his daughter's performance in school.
Barton interrupts with a drunken phone call from Juliana's home, demanding that Frank and he go to Raglan's institute to see Nola.
After the murders catch the attention of newspapers, Raglan reluctantly acknowledges that the deaths coincided with his sessions with Nola relating to their respective topics.
Upon arrival, Raglan tells Frank the truth about the dwarf-children: they are the accidental product of Nola's psychoplasmic sessions; her rage about her abuse was so strong that she parthenogenetically bore a brood of creatures resembling children who psychically respond and act on the targets of her rage, with Nola completely unaware of their actions.
Realizing the brood are too dangerous to keep anymore, Raglan plans to venture into their quarters and rescue Candice, provided that Frank can keep Nola calm to avoid provoking the children.
[3] In response, he began writing the screenplay for The Brood, aspiring to depict the strife between a divorced couple battling over their child.
[3] In casting the roles of Frank and Nola Carveth, Cronenberg sought actors who were "vague facsimiles" of himself and his wife.
[11] This marked the second time Eggar and Reed had starred in a film together, having previously co-starred in The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (1970).
[8] Eggar was impressed by Cronenberg's screenplay, and agreed to appear in the film, as she felt the role of Nola was "almost Shakespearean... How could you turn this part down?
[17] While Variety called it "an extremely well made, if essentially unpleasant shocker",[18] Leonard Maltin reviewed the film in two sentences: "Eggar eats her own afterbirth while midget clones beat grandparents and lovely young schoolteachers to death with mallets.
"[20] Writing for the Vancouver Sun, Vaughn Palmer lambasted the film, referring to it as "mean, foul and witless...
The site's consensus reads: "The Brood is a grotesque, squirming, hilariously shrill exploration of the bizarre and deadly side of motherhood".
[22] In Cult Movies, Danny Peary, who openly disapproves of Shivers and Rabid, calls The Brood "Cronenberg's best film" because "we care about the characters", and, although he dislikes the ending, "an hour and a half of absorbing, solid cinema".
[35] Written in the aftermath of writer-director Cronenberg's divorce from his wife, The Brood has been noted by critics and film scholars for its prominent themes surrounding fears of parenthood, as well as corollary preoccupations with repression and the treatment of mental illness in women.
"[38] Feminist critic Carrie Rickey notes that, like many of Cronenberg's films, The Brood has been accused of presenting a misogynistic representation of women.