Brain Damage

Brian wakes one morning to find a creature talking in his room. Aylmer is small, glossy and extremely polite. It attaches to his neck and injects a fluid into his brain that produces an indescribable high. It wants one thing in return, and Brian does not notice for the first few nights: the creature feeds on human brains. The subject is not the monster but addiction itself. The film does not hide the metaphor: Brian cannot eat, leaves his girlfriend, goes into withdrawal and writhes on a bathroom floor. Aylmer does not blackmail him, it simply waits; the need does the work. The form is low-budget and does not conceal it. The creature is a puppet, the gore is crude and the locations are cramped. One sequence stands out technically all the same: the hallucination passage, done in saturated coloured light, lands far above its budget. Frank Henenlotter directs. The creature is voiced by John Zacherle, known for hosting horror films on American television, and that courteous voice is the most disturbing element in the picture. A character from the director's previous film appears briefly on the subway. Rick Hearst plays Brian. Who it is for: viewers who like eighties independent horror and films with an open metaphor. Who it is not for: anyone with no tolerance for gore; the film holds nothing back there.