Review: Brain on Fire
Why exactly should we care about Susannah Cahalan? Should we care because she’s 21, living in New York City, has her dream job of working for the New York Post, has a devoted musician boyfriend, and is so bright-eyed that her friend/colleague needs sunglasses? Or should we care because she’s played by Chloë Grace Moretz, who really calls her skills as an actress in non-Hit-Girl roles into question.
According to Brain on Fire, the film adaptation of Cahalan’s memoir, we should care because she will turn out to have a rare autoimmune disease anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, which will only be discovered about a whole series of misdiagnoses, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and even an extreme case of “partying too hard.” We should care that this young girl with a promising future begins to experience strange sensations - hearing voices, seeing bedbug bites on her arms, becoming fuzzy-headed, and generally being unable to focus. Her condition soon jeopardises her promising career, especially after she completely screws up an important interview with a local politician. Her desk-mate (Jenny Slate) and editor (Tyler Perry) can only look on with a mixture of confusion and compassion. The same goes for her divorced parents (Carrie-Anne Moss and Richard Armitage), who both don’t understand what is happening to their daughter.
Increasingly serious seizures land her in more doctors’ offices and hospital rooms, but no one can seem to diagnose what exactly is wrong with her. The never-ending battery of tests show that Susannah is in fine health; whatever it is must be a mental, not physical illness, and the doctors do nothing more than prescribe pills, run more tests, prescribe more pills, etc. as Susannah’s condition deteriorates further and further. On the one hand, one can’t necessarily fault the doctors for believing that Susannah may be psychotic - her sudden outbursts at work and her frightening paranoia are symptomatic of craziness - but the film also rightfully paints her plight as a tale of horror. Everyone seems to be doing anything right, but there’s still a certain callousness in the doctors’ near-disregard for terming her problem as anything other than mental.
Unfortunately, Brain on Fire completely misfires from all cylinders. The whole enterprise smacks of an after-school special, and a terrible one at that. Writer-director Gerard Barrett delivers a generic melodrama that is nothing but a series of cinematically bold-faced moments that carry hardly any weight. The main problem derives from Susannah herself - to return to the question at the start of this review: why exactly should we care about her? She’s a thinly sketched character at best and just because someone is young, intelligent, and has a bright future ahead of her does not mean automatic and immediate audience investment should be had. As such, sympathy is barely stirred and one can’t wait for the boredom the film inflicts to be cured.
Brain on Fire
Directed by: Gerard Barrett
Written by: Gerard Barrett
Starring: Chloë Grace Moretz, Jenny Slate, Richard Armitage, Carrie-Anne Moss, Thomas Mann, Tyler Perry
