Cerebrum Directed by Sebastien Blanc

Cerebrum (2022)

Directed by Sebastien Blanc

After waking up from a year-long coma, an insecure young man must fight his controlling father in order to discover what really happened to his seemingly absent mother, as the true consequences of his past actions unravel before him. (IMDB)

A Movie Review by Mark Walker

Some mild spoilers

Cerebrum follows William (Tobi King Bakare) returning home after waking from the coma he has been in since crashing his car. He has been ‘away’ for a year and things have changed at home. His dad, Richard, (Steve Oram) won’t let him see his mum (Ramona von Pusch) and is behaving weirdly, bringing strange women to the house and digging large holes in the garden at odd hours. William sees strange things around the house and both he, and the audience, begin question his grasp on reality as he learns the truth about his accident, the impact on his family, and the reasons why his dad is behaving strangely.

With a set-up like that, it is not surprising that things don’t end well.

Cerebrum plays on Frankenstein-esque themes of life and death and the power over both. Oram takes the role of Dr Frankenstein, conducting experiments that would likely see him vilified more than Victor himself would have been in Shelley’s original novel. He is the modern-day, modern-day Prometheus.

The film starts well, submerging the audience in William’s confusion, not giving too much away as we try to figure out where his mum is and what Richard is up to. Headaches, visions, noises, and odd behaviour mean we are never quite sure what is reality for William, and it is a nice set-up for the rest of the film.

However, the later parts of the film, after we find out the truth behind the accident and what Richard’s plans are, didn’t work quite so well for me. While I wouldn’t necessarily say I could see exactly where it was going, there were also no real surprises as the revelations came.

Blanc does a great job with the direction, and the main three actors do their roles justice. Steve Oram is always worth watching and his portrayal of the slightly creepy Richard is suitably unsettling. He acts as though he cares about William, but it feels like a front, a means to an end for his ultimate plans.

Tobi King Bakare works well opposite Oram, playing the guilty, confused and troubled William. What I found interesting with this character was what I perceived as a varying level of disability from his injuries/effects of the coma. In one scene he would seem to need a wheelchair and be unable to walk more than a few steps, while in others he was moving around the house quite easily. This could have been a continuity error, but I found it actually heightened the sense of confusion and unreality around William who is suffering from headaches and hallucinations, pushing him into the role of an unreliable narrator and building on the confused reality of his return home. Whether this was intentional or not, or just me being an idiot, I don’t know, but it added to the confusion and disorientation.

Unfortunately, this didn’t carry through into the second half of the film (so I suspect it probably was just me) and the psychological aspect of the story gave way to more standard horror. Neither half is poor, I just didn’t feel they quite gelled in one. There are a few plot holes but if you don’t make the effort to find them, they shouldn’t really worry you; Cerebrum is a psychological horror, not a documentary!

In the end I enjoyed Cerebrum, it just didn’t quite have enough new in it for me. As I often say, this is just my opinion and it doesn’t make Cerebrum a bad film, just one that I would probably not watch again. It doesn’t go into much depth when exploring its themes and there is nothing here that is likely to surprise most people, but it is still a well-made, low-budget sci-fi/horror that will entertain with its solid  direction and acting.

Signature Entertainment presents Cerebrum on Digital Platforms 3rd July

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