My psychological analysis of 'Brainscan'.

Hello everybody.

Doing well ?

I watched "Brainscan" days ago. I'm 31 years old and a real movie buff. That kind of movie is a little guilty pleasure :)

Well I'm not going to talk about the quality of the movie. It's about the psychological analysis side that I would like to talk. It's a very long message that I'm going to write since I'm trying to make a puzzle of the dozen of messages the movie gave me. So don't read it if you're looking for a short analyse. My ideas are in mess :) But of course you're free to if you want. But I don't think you can understand my analysis of the movie if you read it quickly or only some parts. Ok ? So let's go :)

I read an interesting critic made by Desson Howe from the Washington Post. These following lines are part of his critic :

"After reveling in gratuitous violence and girl-ogling, "Brainscan" attempts to redeem its guilty pleasures with false, socially correct admonitions -- about how we are all susceptible to a little murder and titillation, how technology desensitizes us to violence and morality, and so on. But if the filmmakers really believed this stuff, they wouldn't have made this movie, would they ?"

This review is good and also is useful to analyze "Brainscan".

To me, "Brainscan" is comparable to "A nightmare on Elm street" (by Wes Craven, 1984). Both are playing with reality, dreams, unreality. Both end with a surprise. Remember the end of the Craven's movie when the parents are waving at Nancy. You think all came back to normal and then Freddy's hand catches the parents and it ends.
Well, "Brainscan" is quite different actually. I would say that it is more vicious.

Desson Howe thinks that "Brainscan" does not really help, and that they should not have done the movie to denounce, since doing that kind of movie could encourage more than denounce violence.

I agree with him actually.

But now I want to go further..

Some movies are made with the aim in view, with the intention to desensitizes and we can see the results through our own evolution that some things, movies, musics that shocked us years ago seem okay for us now because we got used to.
Movies that shocked you when you were 25 could seem boring or soft compared to the ones we can watch today. I think most of them are made to desensitizes by intention and some not, just made by people who also got used to "old" violence.

Like we know, our subconscious can make a mental note of things our conscious can't "record" or recognize. These things affect us anyway, more than we can think.

This is why I believe we should be able to recognize these things. If we do, then it won't affect us as much as when we don't recognize them.
Every one of us should be able to know where he/she is affected by movies with that knowledge in mind.
That's why some are very affected by horror movies and some are not that much affected. Some can watch some violence and not be very affected (which does not mean he/she is tired of), but can watch violence without having nightmares, bad night after that. Some just can't. There are immediately affected. It is also because they might have lived an experience that was violence toward them that left them some after-effects. For them, it's harder to have that distance because even if they recognize the subconscious effect, there brains have the after-effects that have marked them for ever.

This is where I found "Brainscan" vicious. Actually I really liked the movie for the athmosphere and the settings. I'm not saying it's a great movie, I think it's a good little movie with a lot of fun and having the skills to recognize the effects it has on the subconscious, and no violent history in my past, I was not shocked or affraid by the movie, which again does not mean I'm tired of violence and that I would accept it in real.

Let's analyse the movie now..

Do you remember how the movie begins ?

After some flash back images of Michael (Edward Furlong) who had an accident years ago, you see a dog (who actually already is the dog you see later) with the hand in his mouth.
The hand that is in his mouth after the murders.

So the movie starts with something not shown as a dream or a virtual vision since the story with the game has not started yet, right ?

So it starts like that and at the end, when everythings come back to "normal", when Michael has a positive state of mind and is looking for a better life with his possible girlfriend and his "buddy for life", you think it's going to finish like that and then you think : "Cool it was like a bad dream, it did not happen so now that Michael has lived that experience, he is going to have a better life".

Yes it's true, isn't it ? So the credits arrive and it looks like the movie is over and then... you hear the voice of the Trickster who says : "Aren't you forgetting something ?" and then you see the same scene with the dog with the hand in his mouth. Just like a circle without ending, everything seem to start again..

Strange ending isn't it ?

Well to me, my opinion is that this is a very viscious ending. A very smart one actually. Kevin Andrew Walker who later wrote the screenplay of "Seven" and some more smart movies already was experienced to do us a little trick.

My opinion is that our subconscious is affected by this message and to me, it is the following : After all, reality and dreams are not really different. The violence that you can imagine is the same as the one you can do. It has the same effect.

Which is not true at all because what is bad is to do it, not to think about it. Of course it's not very sane to think about it since it can brings to the acts but the worse thing is to do it. And when you know that, when you are conscient of that, you don't act but put yourself a limit.

That subconscious message could make us believe that violence is not that bad and then not have these limits.

Maybe you think that I'm exaggerating or wrong. Well it's possible, so don't hesitate to write me back and give me your opinion. But please, only if you did read all my message, not only some parts or quickly. I made a lot of thinking to write it, so do the same please.

Yes I believe that the evil dominates the world and so it also is in movies. That's why I believe some movies are made to make us tired of violence and push our limits until we act.

I'm not saying all is bad but that all need to be analized.

Thank you for reading my long message. I had a lot of pleasure to write it since I love to analyse movies. That's also what a movie buff is made of :)

I wish you a nice day.



*Lord of Movies*