Thursday 28 January 2010

Brain Dead (1990) - Horror Film Review


I really don't know where to begin with my thoughts on Brain Dead. It is one of the most confusing films I have seen in a long time, not a lot makes sense at all. I'm not convinced that the script writer had any idea either. 

A brain expert called Rex Martin is asked by a shady research agent working for a company called Eunice, to go and visit an alleged insane man suffering paranoia at a mental home to see if he is faking it or not. Before this man went loco and killed several people he had created an essential mathematical formula, in his madness he had destroyed half the equation. Eunice want either his sanity returned so that he can provide the formula, or for him to be stopped from ever being able to tell anyone else the formula.


From this straight forward intro the plot wildly collapses into many different tangents. Seemingly simultaneously Rex Martin is in a coma, a brain in a jar and a paranoid schizophrenic in a madhouse. He is married, he is single, he has kids, has no kids, has many different names, nothing really makes sense. As an example at one point in the film he wakes up in a bed by a man, who then goes and hides in a cupboard, looking for the man he finds him dead with his eyes removed. Then he wakes up in a bed by a man who then goes and hides in a cupboard, looking for the man he finds out that he himself has somehow turned into a ghost as he is also still laying in bed. Opening the cupboard he falls into it landing in a vast ocean. No sense at all!

The film stars Bill Pullman (Independence Day) who does a superb job of portraying someone totally confused and with no idea what is happening, though I guess not much acting is needed for that! The films screenplay was co-written by someone who used to write stories for The Twilight Zone. I did enjoy the film, it just made no sense, but it's cool applying your own thoughts on what the film was trying to achieve.

SCORE:

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