The Brain (1988)

(In French, On Cable TV, July 2021) A mildly interesting premise can’t save Canadian low-budget horror film The Brain from its low-imagination execution. The central idea does have its charm — something about a self-help guru’s TV show actually leading viewers to mind-control, and the rebellious student sent to the guru for personality readjustment. You can see the bare bones of a far more interesting movie here, but it’s all undone by indifferent screenwriting, incompetent directing and a disappointing low-budget execution. Sure, there’s a mildly exciting car crash that comes up as if to wake viewers from their growing slumber, but then we go to a twentysomething “teenager” gyrating wildly on a restaurant counter to reassure us that it’s not going to be any good after all. The film does get worse to the point of acquiring a patina of so-bad-it’s-good charm as it goes on as its brain monster grows larger, more powerful and definitely rubberier. By the time an overlong third act has the protagonist and his puffy-jacket-wearing girlfriend running around a facility with a wholly unconvincing brain chasing them down, director Edward Hunt’s film has become a sub-example of cheap 1980s horror movies. Despite the New York license plates, there’s some definite Canadianness to the exterior shoots, even though the level of snow in back-to-back scenes varies quite a bit. But consistency is a hallmark of big minds and decent budgets, none of which the film has. I had to double-check that The Brain came after the 1982 end of the Canadian tax shelter film era, because this definitely feels like a movie of that time.