Review of Brain on Fire (2017) by Steven D — 22 Jun 2018

I have to say that I'm surprised by the generally negative reviews this film has received from various sources. It's the true story of Susannah Cahalan, a promising young journalist with the New York Post who suddenly begins to hear voices and experience hallucinations. The movie essentially traces her decline into a basically catatonic state. It's jarring to watch that gradual decline, and you sympathize with those around her (her parents, her boyfriend and her co-workers) as they find themselves lost to understand what was happening to Susannah and as they struggle as various doctors try to diagnose what's wrong with her. Was she an alcoholic? Was she on drugs? Was she just having trouble adjusting to life after college? Those were initial guesses. Then seizures started, and her connection with reality got worse. Was she schizophrenic? Psychotic? Just what was wrong with her?

I'd agree with those who suggest that the movie didn't have a lot of depth to it. It's short at about an hour and a half and pretty much goes right into the story. To be honest, though, this didn;t need to be turned into a major character study giving us a lot of information about Susannah's life before this happened. We learned enough. She had a happy life, a good relationship and a promising career. That was all established. The fast pace of the movie, to me, actually worked well, because it made the movie seem a bit chaotic at times; it added a sense of bewilderment to what was happening - which really brought us right into the minds of Susannah and those around her. If the viewer was confused - how must they all have felt as this spiralled farther and farther out of control. As a medical mystery and family drama, I thought this worked.

I also thought Chloe Grace Moretz did a fantastic job as Susannah. I'm not an actor, but I'm not sure that convincingly portraying someone gradually losing touch with reality would be an easy job. Moretz handled it well in my opinion. It's been interesting to me to read that what was eventually determined to be Susannah's illness (a very rare form of encephalitis) is believed to be responsible for at least some cases of supposed demon possession.

I found this a very engaging, fast-paced and interesting movie. (9/10).