Brain Freeze Movie Review

Peacock Island is the swanky home to Quebec’s much-despised noveaux-rich. Out on their isolated paradise, they live it up in huge faux-Chateauxs, while hard-working nannies take care of their alienated children. Meanwhile, the parents work out and swig kale smoothies. But most of all, the wealthy residents love to golf, even in the depths of Quebec’s relentless winter snow. So, just how do they keep nature from interrupting their favourite pastime?

Enter the sleazy Biotech firm that keeps the greens, well, green. Unnaturally so. And, like all good disasters, the toxic mess quickly escalates into a full-scale contamination. Now, you can easily draw a straight line from this to the Crazies (either version!), as a lethally tainted water supply quickly zombifies the hapless islanders, with just a few lucky souls able to maintain their humanity long enough to, perhaps, survive and even get rescued.

Of course, aside from the zombified residents, there’s a much more dangerous threat behind it all. Instead of the Government, it’s the Umbrella-esque conglomerate, who’ll do anything to maintain their image and keep the tame career politicians in their pocket. So it’s not exactly subtle about its politics and if 2020 taught us anything, it’s that all this isn’t so far from the likely reaction. And it was impossible to look out at the deserted streets during the first lockdown and NOT immediately think The Last of Us, especially when Brain Freeze begins to emulate the iconic game’s gruesome body-horror.

But none of that takes away from how good Brain Freeze really is. It looks totally gorgeous. The opening scenes alone, where the deadly agent is sprayed onto the plush golf-course by hazmat-suited workers, are strikingly pretty. The fresh dynamic of a brother reluctantly taking care of his baby sister is also a pleasant change from the usual, predictable bunch of cookie-cutter survivors, with many genuine surprises about how it all plays out.

So, is it worth watching one more zombie flick? Well, there are plenty of fun, trashy zombie films out there and plenty of really bad ones that never hit the spot. Happily, Brain Freeze is way up in the top tier of undead films. It is great to feel genuinely invested in how the characters could escape their bleak situation. It also has a genuine social anger behind it that, frankly, most of the better films in the genre do tend to have. Even so, it’s not afraid of some playfully camp moments, and any po-faced moralising gets undercut almost immediately.

If you want a little more brains mixed in with your gore, this is well worth tucking into. But it’s also a bloody good zombie film. Highly recommended.