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Robert Eggers Fans, You’re Going To Love This Surrealist Horror That Pays Homage to the Greats of Silent Cinema — Just Trust Us

‘Brand Upon the Brain!’ is Guy Maddin’s Love Letter to the Silent Film Era

An homage to everything that made pre-Hays Code Hollywood beautiful, Maddin’s brainchild, Brand Upon the Brain! is whimsical and experimental. The movie follows Guy Maddin (the film’s protagonist, not to be confused with the film’s director), played by actors Erik Steffen Maahs and Sullivan Brown, as he returns home to the tiny and isolated island his parents own a now-abandoned orphanage on. His mission is simple: do as his mother asked and slap two fresh coats of paint on the orphanage. Soon after arriving, however, Guy is sucked into a whirlpool of memories from childhood. Raised alongside the orphans, Guy was witness to the many oddities, mysteries, and horrors that occurred there. A child-led cult, teenage detectives, and children with holes in the back of their heads were just a few of the strange happenings. Guy’s childhood was a twisty tangle of intrigue, especially once he fell in with Wendy (Jake Morgan-Scharhon), the aforementioned teenage detective investigating the cases of orphans with holes in their heads. As Guy helps Wendy investigate, the darkness at the heart of the orphanage comes to light.

The 13 Biggest Stars of the Silent Film Era, Ranked

Even without talking, these actors were amazing.

Quoted as saying he feels “haunted” by the knowledge that more than 80% of all silent films have been lost to history, it is clear that Brand Upon the Brain! is an ode to all those movies Maddin mourns. Every aspect of Brand Upon the Brain! is tailored to be evocative of a lost film that’s been miraculously found in the modern day. Shot entirely on 8mm film, the footage has a dreamy, grainy look that works perfectly with the decision to shoot in black-and-white, and the gothic aesthetic. The clips are edited together with purposeful flickers and stutters. Dizzying at times, the hodgepodge editing creates a fantastical tone, where anything feels possible. This dark, yet magical atmosphere is essential to lending credence to the bizarre places Brand Upon the Brain!‘s plot goes.

This is the Scariest (and Saddest) Part of ‘Brand Upon the Brain!’

With such a surrealist narrative, Brand Upon the Brain! runs the risk of becoming unmoored and floating away. To ground the silliness, Brand Upon the Brain! peppers in bursts of shocking violence. Scalpings, forced C-sections, and murder are all casually alluded to or witnessed on the grounds of the orphanage. As with any child-centric narrative, there are the obvious villains, in this case, Mother and Father, Guy’s actual parents and the overseers of the orphanage. Mother, played by the actresses Gretchen Krich, Cathleen O’Malley, and Susan Corzatte, is obsessed with recapturing her youth—literally. Father, played by actors Todd Moore and Clayton Corzatte, is distant and consumed by his scientific tinkering. Together, they are vicious tyrants to the children. Child abuse always feels grittier and more visceral than other forms of real-world horror. There is an immediate presence of danger in watching Mother take such obvious pleasure in tormenting one particular girl called Sis (Maya Lawson). Mother’s insistence on repressing any desire Sis feels is brutal and oppressive. Mother’s iron-fisted behavior echoes into the behavior of the other children. Savage Tom, the child cult-leader, threatens to cut out the heart of another orphan. It’s an eerily realistic portrait of how abuse affects everyone involved.

What’s worse than seeing the abuse is, thanks to the dual timeline, watching several of the children from Guy’s childhood fall into perpetuating the same cycles of abuse they were once subject to. As many of the orphans find themselves unable to get out from under the tyrannical thumb of Mother and Father, they grow into monsters who enact the same cruelty on a new host of helpless children. The painting Guy is so intent on completing in the present is only a metaphor for covering up the ugliness of his childhood. The more the audience learns about Guy’s childhood, however, the more they realize this is a Sisyphean task. For as absurd as Brand Upon the Brain! can get, the horror at times feels painfully grim and recognizable.

With only a narrator speaking in Brand Upon the Brain!, director Maddin strips away all the distractions of dialogue. His only tools were visual language and sonic emphasis. The techniques and aesthetics of the silent era that Maddin is so in awe of elevate Brand Upon the Brain! from being a trippy, modern-day surrealist project into a truly unique space. Fans of Robert Eggers and his strident research should definitely give this one a try!