Brand Upon the Brain!
The Film Company | Release Date: May 9, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
79
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Audacious, hypnotic and utterly breathtaking. Read full review
88
New York PostLou Lumenick
Not many people are making silent horror serials these days, but Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin pushes his love of lurid melodrama to the limit in his latest demented treat, Brand Upon the Brain! Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
The film is a singular achievement. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
It's an astonishing film: weird, obsessed, drawing on subterranean impulses, hypnotic. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
A feverishly imaginative Freudian vampire film from Guy Maddin, is like a silent-movie serial by Louis Feuillade or an improbable collaboration between writer Oscar Wilde and photographer Man Ray. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
This much is guaranteed: You won't leave thinking you've seen the like before. Read full review
80
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
Delirious, ingenious, often very funny and strangely touching film. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
The result is giddy, exciting and hilarious, not quite like any artistic experience you've ever had. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Enhanced by Jason Staczek's superb score, this is characteristically intense and, unlike most of Maddin's silent-movie models, frenetically edited. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Coming after the inspired trifecta of "Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary," "Cowards Bend The Knee," and "The Saddest Music In The World," Brand feels a little like boilerplate Maddin rather than a fresh burst of inspiration. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
Wildly imaginative if extremely strange. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy Burr
How often are psychosexual lunacy and classic cinema combined so fiendishly well? Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeFore
Winnepeg filmmaker Guy Maddin isn't known for run-of-the-mill movies, but the feature he debuted at the Toronto Fest was outrageous even for him. A silent film taking the form of a twelve-chapter Feuillade-flavored serial and designed to have live accompaniment, the movie itself is a match for any of his features to date, and could outstrip earlier efforts in the arthouse arena. Read full review
70
VarietyScott Foundas
Billed as a silent film, Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain! is actually closer to a live theatrical event -- a feature-length motion picture screened with the accompaniment of a live orchestra, plus Foley artists, sound effects technicians and assorted vocalists, too. Together, they provide the elaborate soundscape for a typically frenetic, Maddin-esque amalgam of the autobiographical, Freudian and willfully absurd. Read full review
60
Village VoiceAaron Hillis
Not to discredit its wild artistry by saying the gimmick's the prize, but . . . the gimmick's the prize. Without all the hoopla, there simply isn't enough variation to this stylized fever-dream to justify its fatiguing running time, nor to call it anything less than predictably Maddin–esque. Read full review
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