With the release of the director’s latest body horror Crimes of the Future, Guardian writers have singled out their most-loved Cronenberg offerings
Cronenberg’s horror films could be described as unnerving and unsettling, or majestically gross, but they’re almost never scary in the traditional sense. The Brood is a blood-curdling exception, unleashing a small army of half-formed dwarf-children with murderous intent. Written in the wake of Cronenberg’s bitter divorce and custody battle, The Brood is a raw expression of anger and psychic distress, which manifests itself in the bodily mutations that often find their way into his work. Only here the little monsters are literally the product of broken marriage, asexual offspring that the mother, Nola (Samantha Eggar), spawns while undergoing an intensive New Age therapy.
