David Cronenberg: All 21 Films Ranked From Worst To Best

2. The Brood

The Brood is the culmination of Cronenberg's early cinema, perfectly encapsulating all of the themes and imagery employed in Stereo, COTF, Shivers and Rabid (and, indeed, its follow-up, Scanners) into one depraved and consistently shocking study of family life, parasitic sexuality and body horror. 36 years after its release it still has the capacity to disturb even the most desensitised fan of horror cinema. At the film's core is the brilliant Oliver Reed, a doctor that performs "psychoplasmics". It's basically a psychological form of plastic surgery, in which characters that are struggling with their emotions undergo bodily transformations in order to become mentally stable. Nola Carveth, his patient, is so disturbed that - after undergoing the procedure - she finds herself capable of creating a "brood" of monstrous asexual, colour blind, toothless and navel-less children willing to do her bidding. Given that this is a horror film, it's not really a shock to learn that her bidding basically involves killing anyone that annoys her. It certainly all feels slightly far-fetched, when the narrative is laid out like that. But the way that Cronenberg teases out mysteries, the often astonishing imagery, the excellent acting and the ease with which the director melds themes of family, fear of childbirth and the increasing popularity of posthuman plastic surgery into a complex and simultaneously terrifying narrative is brilliant. There have been suggestions that this is a somewhat autobiographical film, underlining similar fears of fatherhood to those of David Lynch's Eraserhead. Whatever its inspiration, The Brood is one of Cronenberg's most impeccable films, and it continues to freak audiences out even after multiple viewings.