Brain Dead

BRAIN DEAD is cheesy fun. It’s the story of a brain surgeon who performs a highly unethical operation on a man the government suspects of having a secret deep inside his cerebellum. When the surgeon goes to work, so does the movie, weaving in and out of reality in layer upon hallucinogenic layer until the viewer shares in the characters’ disorientation.

I saw BRAIN DEAD by accident: I thought I was getting BRAINDEAD, the early Peter Jackson film. B D, was made by Adam Simon and stars Bills Paxton and Pullman, and it’s 90 minutes of over-the-top, vaguely horrific imagery that manages to do what it intends: set a paranoiac gloss over everyday events that’s creepy enough for spookiness, yet not too creepy for fun.