The Brood - Reception

Reception

Reviews of The Brood were mixed. While Variety called it "an extremely well made, if essentially unpleasant shocker", Leonard Maltin rated it an outright "bomb". Roger Ebert called it "a bore" and "disgusting in ways that are not entertaining", and even went as far as asking, "Are there really people who want to see reprehensible trash like this?"

In Cult Movies, Danny Peary, who openly disapproves of Shivers and Rabid, calls The Brood "Cronenberg's best film" because "we care about the characters", and, although he dislikes the ending, "an hour and a half of absorbing, solid cinema".

In his An Introduction to the American Horror Film, critic Robin Wood views The Brood as a reactionary work portraying feminine power as irrational and horrifying, and the dangerous attempts of Oliver Reed's character's psychoanalysis as an analogue to the dangers of trying to undo repression in society. In Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting, W. Scott Poole argues that a number of horror films produced in the 1970s and 1980s mirrored the conservative critiques of women's liberation movements and the somewhat uncomfortable anxiety over women's control over their bodies and reproduction, including Alien and It's Alive.

Despite mixed reviews, the film has still received a 'fresh' rating of 79% on Rotten Tomatoes.