Canadian cult filmmaker Guy Maddin's ecstatically perverse jaunt into childhood's protracted gestation period is a hypnotic murk-fest filled to the brim with Sturm und Drang neo-psychedelia. Guy (Erik Steffen Maahs) returns to his childhood homestead, a lighthouse to restore it with two coats of paint for an ailing mother. Outsized delirium takes over: ghoulish rituals, surreptitious experiments, demented ghosts, social vampires and other phantasms of psychosis of an overextended memory is underpinned by distinctly Freudian impulses turned into artistic statements. The miscegenation of silent-era aesthetics, a mosaic of encoded visual cues and Maddin's continued fascination with high theatricality punctuated with trippy pop iconography delivers a Gothic fever dream that remains etched in your mind, whether you like it or not.
Review of Brand Upon the Brain!
