Hey what’s up guys. Today I’ll show you a
science-fiction horror film: “The Brood”! Spoilers ahead, watch out and take care!
The film begins with a psychotherapist short-named Doctor, performing his unconventional technique,
“psychoplasmics,” in front of a crowd. He developed this method where he encourages
his mentally disturbed patients to let go of their suppressed emotions and memories,
by inflicting physiological changes on their bodies. One of his patients is Mike, a grown man
who has issues with his father. Doctor pretends to be Mike’s dad, in order to trigger his suppressed
emotions about how being weak is only for women. His dad never tolerated being vulnerable and
crying, inflicting toxic masculinity on him. Doctor triggers Mike’s emotions, prompting him
to reveal the little red bumps he inflicted on his body, because of his anger toward his father.
The performance ends there, and the audience leaves the stadium; but one of them goes
straight up to the private guest room. He’s Frank, a husband to one of Doctor’s seriously disturbed
patients. Frank and his wife are in legal embattlement about the custody of their daughter.
Frank takes his daughter home; and while bathing her, he discovers bruises and scratches on her
back. Frank immediately goes to Doctor’s office, and informs him about his intent
to stop the visitation rights. The daughter won’t tell her father about what happened;
but Frank knows that her wife, who is under Doctor’s psychiatric care, should be responsible
for the physical abuse. Doctor points out Frank has no legal right to deny access; but Frank is
confident to take the matter to court, because of the concrete evidence on his daughter’s body.
The following day, Frank goes to his lawyer, and informs him about what happened during his
recent visit to his wife. Frank argues Doctor’s unconventional method of treating his patients,
is just his way of hiding that he triggers and pressures them to hurt themselves.
However, his lawyer points out his argument is not strong enough. Doctor is a professional, and the
law favors motherhood; so it is just a matter of time before the police show up at Frank’s door,
if he insists on stopping the visitation rights. The only way for Frank to have full custody
of his daughter, is if he gathers testimonies and evidence to prove that Doctor is a fraud,
and his institute is not a safe place for kids. After consulting him, Frank fetches his daughter
from school and brings her to her grandma, his wife’s mother. Meanwhile, Frank’s wife, Nola,
is having a psychoplasmic session with Doctor. He triggers her emotion and memories, prompting him
to discover that Nola was physically and verbally abused by her narcissistic alcoholic mother.
Nola was also neglected by her alcoholic father because of shame and denial.
At that same time, the daughter views old photographs of her mother with her grandma.
While looking through them, grandma shares stories with her granddaughter. It turns out,
Nola was frequently hospitalized as a child, because of the strange and unexplainable wheals
on her skin, that even the doctors were unable to diagnose. Grandma’s stories get interrupted when
they hear noises from the kitchen. Grandma leaves her granddaughter in the living room, and goes to
the kitchen to check out the cause of the noises. As she enters, she finds the kitchen in a mess,
with broken things scattered on the floor. The culprit, a dwarf-like child, attacks Grandma
before she can call for help, and bludgeons her to death with a meat hammer. The daughter hears all
the noises from the living room; but she waits for them to stop before entering the kitchen.
As she opens the door, she finds her Grandma’s lifeless body lying on the cold kitchen floor,
which has been tainted by her blood. The daughter can only stare at her as she is speechless.
Later that day, while at work, Frank gets a call from the police, telling him what happened. Frank
immediately goes to the police station, where the policeman shares the incident’s details.
while on a routine patrol in their neighborhood, an officer noticed the broken kitchen window. The
officer found Frank’s mother-in-law’s body in the kitchen, with the murder weapon next to her. He
also found Frank’s daughter upstairs suspiciously sound asleep in the bedroom. The policeman informs
him he sought their police psychologist’s help after observing that the little girl is too calm,
considering what just happened to her grandmother. The policeman then asks Frank if he knows any
person who would have a motive to kill his mother-in-law. Frank shares she had a long
series of lovers, but he never met them. She was divorced from her husband about a decade ago.
The interrogation gets interrupted by the psychologist, who informs Frank about his
daughter’s mental health condition. He suspects that the little girl saw what happened to her
grandmother, which somehow traumatized her or disturbed her. The officer who found her
said that it was very difficult to wake her up, which indicates an abnormally deep sleep. It is
a method that children use to escape or hide from something too painful to face. The psychologist
also shares that she told him she does not remember being brought to her grandmother’s.
The psychologist tells Frank he must encourage his daughter to remember, because she might
have a severe breakdown, if she suppresses or ignores the traumatizing event she experienced.
After explaining everything, Frank leaves the office and takes his daughter home.
Meanwhile, Nola is in another therapy session with Doctor; but now they’re focusing on her father’s
issues. Doctor pretends to be her father, and Nola expresses her unsuppressed feelings toward
him. She cries as she tells him that he should have protected her, because he was her father;
but he didn’t! He should have protected her when her mother was abusing her;
but he didn’t even stop her! The following day, Frank takes
photographs of the bruises and scratches on his daughter’s back before fetching his father-in-law,
who just returned from another state for his ex-wife's funeral. Frank leaves his daughter
with her grandpa before meeting a former patient of Doctor. The patient still suffers
from psychoplasmic-induced lymphoma. It turns out, he and Frank’s lawyers know each other, as
they are both preparing a case against Doctor. Frank is claiming psychological damage, while the
patient is claiming physiological damage. he shows Frank the physiological damage below his chin,
that Doctor’s psychoplasmic treatment has done to him. His lymphoma was caused by the psychoplasmic,
and it is now spreading in his body. However, the patient needs more than a claim and cancer in his
body, to prove that Doctor’s unconventional methods are unethical. Nevertheless,
he still wants to take the matter to court even if he loses, because it will put doubt in people
about psychoplasmics. The patient offers his help to Frank, as he knows a lot of people who have
experienced psychoplasmic treatment. Meanwhile, Frank’s father-in-law goes to Doctor’s institute,
and requests to talk to Nola about her mother’s death. However, Doctor rejects his request,
and claims that the death of Nola’s mother might worsen her mental health condition.
This angers the old man greatly because it’s just atrocious to bury his ex-wife,
without informing their daughter. However, he cannot do anything as Nola is under Doctor’s care;
but he will find a way to tell her anyway. On the other hand, Frank arrives at his
daughter’s school and invites her teacher to discuss his daughter’s school performance.
They put the little girl to sleep first before discussing her. The teacher shares her worries,
regarding the lack of motherly care his daughter experiences. Frank shares that Nola only married
him for sanity; but it only broke their family apart instead of getting better. Their
conversation gets interrupted when Frank receives a call from a drunken father-in-law, who is at his
dead ex-wife’s house. The old man demands him to come with him to Doctor’s institute to see Nola.
Frank attempts to snap his father-in-law out of his not-so-good idea; but the old man is
persistent in seeing Nola with or without him. So Frank has no choice but to agree to his demand.
Frank apologizes to the teacher for leaving his daughter in her care; and after that,
he goes to console his father-in-law. After the phone call ends, the old man wanders
around the house, the kitchen reminding him of the murder of his ex-wife. He goes upstairs to
their bedroom, and lies on the bed as he mourns her death. His momentum gets interrupted, when
the same dwarf-child killer comes out underneath the bed, and bludgeons him to death with crystal
balls. Not long after, Frank arrives at the home, and discovers his father-in-law’s lifeless body on
the bedroom floor. The dwarf-child killer comes out from the dark, and throws a crystal ball
at Frank. However, Frank sees him through the mirror, and dodges the attack. The killer
runs out of the room, and goes to hide in the bathroom. Frank carefully enters the bathroom,
and the killer attacks him from behind. However, for some unexplainable reason, the killer suddenly
falls to the bathroom floor, and dies before killing Frank. He immediately takes the killer to
the police for investigation. The police autopsy unveils some shocking revelations to Frank.
Meanwhile when Frank is away, the teacher answers a phone call from Nola, who immediately recognizes
her voice. Nola promptly accuses her of having an affair with her husband and ruining their
family. The teacher quickly drops the call after hearing Nola’s insults; and she puts
a pillow on the telephone when it rings again. On the other hand, Frank listens intently to the
forensic pathologist, as he describes the dwarf child-like killer. The creature is colorblind,
naturally toothless, asexual, and devoid of a navel, indicating no known means of natural
human birth. At that same time, Nola is having another therapy session with Doctor, who pretends
to be the teacher this time. Frank arrives at his home; and the teacher immediately informs him Nola
has called. She does not share what happened in the phone call and leaves his house.
Frank’s father-in-law’s bizarre death reaches the newspaper, prompting Doctor to send his
patients to municipal care except for Nola; he then closes his institute. Later that day,
Frank meets with the patient again, who introduces Mike to him. Although still mentally unstable,
Mike informs Frank that Nola is Doctor’s “queen bee.” He tells Frank that Doctor chose Nola,
because she is the living proof that his unconventional treatment, psychoplasmic,
is the ultimate therapeutic device. Mike breaks down, as he shares that Doctor forced them to
leave his institute, except for Nola. Meanwhile, Frank watches from afar, as his daughter safely
enters the school with her teacher’s supervision. They all enter the classroom, and while the
daughter prepares to take her jacket, two dwarf children corner her. They lock her inside a room,
before attacking and bludgeoning the teacher with wooden hammers in front of her class. One of the
kids recovers from the shock, and hurriedly goes outside to call for help. Fortunately, Frank is
still there conversing with a co-parent. Frank quickly runs inside, only to find the
teacher’s class crying and shaking from fear, as they stare at their murdered teacher. He
also notices that his daughter is missing, and he knows very well who took her precious daughter.
Truth be told, the dwarf children take Frank’s daughter to their hideout. Later that day,
while Frank waits for the police update about his daughter, Mike arrives at his house. Mike shares
that Doctor has something to do with the disturbed kids in the workshed that Nola takes care of.
Frank immediately leaves his home and drives to the workshed, where he confronts Doctor. Frank
informs him that the dwarf children killed the teacher, and took his daughter to the workshed.
Doctor replies that if they indeed brought her to Nola, then his daughter should be upstairs,
in the attic. Doctor confesses the truth about the dwarf children.
It turns out, they are the accidental product of Nola’s psychoplasmic sessions.
For a long time, she had suppressed her rage regarding the abuse she experienced as a child,
and it was so intense that she parthenogenetically bore a brood of deformed and dwarf children.
It is a form of asexual reproduction, in which embryos form, grow, and develop without
fertilization by sperm. Nola’s offspring psychically respond and act on the target
of her rage, with her utterly unaware of their actions. That is why during the last visitation,
the daughter came home with bruises and scratches on her back, because
the brood acted on Nola’s range. The same thing happened with Nola’s parents and the teacher;
apparently, they were also killed by the brood. Doctor realizes that keeping the brood
is not safe anymore for anyone; so he plots a venture into their quarters and rescues
Frank’s daughter, provided that he will keep Nola calm to avoid provoking the brood.
They part ways, with Frank going to Nola while Doctor goes to the attic. Frank attempts to use
a feigned rapprochement, long enough for Doctor to wake up and collect Frank’s daughter. However,
Nola sees through his lies, so she lets him see what she has become. A psychoplasmically-induced
external womb has formed on the side of her belly; and she gives birth to another child through it.
Nola licks her newly born child clean; but she notices the disgust on Frank’s face as she does
so. This makes her subconsciously trigger the brood, causing them to kill Doctor.
Nola realizes that her husband did not come there because he loves her, but just wants to take the
daughter away from her. Because of that, she threatens to kill their daughter rather than
lose her. This prompts the brood to go after the daughter, who hurriedly hides in a closet.
However, the brood becomes aggressive, and they begin to break through the door,
and attempt to grab her. As Frank hears his daughter’s screams, he has left with no choice.
He strangles Nola to death in desperation; and sure enough, the screams stop. Frank
goes upstairs and finds the brood lifeless, without their mother’s psychic connection.
Frank carries his visibly traumatized daughter back to his car and departs from the hell-like
facility. The film ends with the pair sitting in silence, unaware of the two small lesions—
a stage of the phenomenon experienced by Nola— that appear on her daughter’s arm!
This’s Daniel CC Movie Channel! Stay safe and enjoy your day!