BRAIN DEAD is a low rent horror film that feels like an indie rip-off of RE-ANIMATOR. It's best known today for being confused with the Peter Jackson classic BRAINDEAD, with which it has nothing in common. It goes for a psychological approach to the material, but the story has been done better and more convincingly elsewhere. The cheapness is apparent throughout, particularly in the way a couple of white-painted rooms stand in for laboratories and the like. I was surprised that mainstream actors like Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton took roles in this as personally I think the material is beneath them. The story sees Pullman's brain surgeon going crazy and believing that he's a hallucination in a disturbed brain; the story becomes a thriller of sorts as his behaviour becomes more and more bizarre. It's oddball indeed, but not at all satisfying.
Review of Brain Dead
