Fantasia Fest 2021: ‘Brain Freeze’ chomps hard on social issues

As Rick Grimes famously preached: “We are the walking dead.” That’s not more apparent than in the modern world, especially in a pandemic sort, when we’ve all got a death grip on our phones, our thumbs scrolling mercilessly for a serotonin boost. Filmed pre-Covid in Quebec, and playing this year’s Fantasia Fest, Julien Knafo’s Brain Freeze, co-written with Jean Barbe, feels both prescient and timely — a balancing act of socio-political commentary on class, culture, and corporate greed, twisted together with pointed insight into digital disease, conservationism, and reactionary behavior around the spread of a deadly virus.

The infected, as they’re called, are mere pawns in a much grander, more sinister schematic. The real villains of the story are those willing to sacrifice innocent, healthy people for their own distorted moral beliefs. In Brain Freeze, radio personality Patrick Nault, a bit of a whacko fake-news nut, whose job relies on mud-slinging and riling up a conservative fanbase, represents extremist point of views. His popular radio show on the city’s No. 1 radio station serves as the central thread line to the film with his conspiratorial diatribes soundtracking the real mayhem erupting out on Peacock Island, a secluded area comprised of mostly the rich. The grime of the city lies not too far away, yet it feels a wholly different world.

In the dead of winter, the social elites want to be able to play golf year-round, so a company called Biotech is hired to fix the problem with DNA-modified turf. When an obnoxiously perfect couple named Maud and Marcel decide to play a few rounds, a hole-in-one ignites blood-sucking bedlam across the island. The film, reading almost like Three Men and a Baby or Baby’s Day Out (but with flesh-eaters), follows two very different families: Andre, his baby sister Annie, his overworked mother, and the gentle housemaid/nanny Camila; and security guard Dan and his daughter Patricia. When Andre’s and Dan’s worlds seemingly collapse down around them, they become an unlikely apocalyptic pair, whose generational divide allows the story to further dissect and analyze its themes.

Andre (Iani Bédard) is your typical phone-obsessed Gen Zer, and Dan (Roy Dupuis) is your boomer, a doomsday prepper, who frequently attempts making a fire without modern conveniences. Their polar opposite personalities both supply plenty of narrative friction and an eventual compromise, as they learn that perhaps meeting in the middle will do them each a bit of good. With the island under strict quarantine (where have we heard that before?), Andre and Dan must concoct a game plan of survival and convince those on the mainland that not everyone is infected. Of course, Patrick Nault continues spreading his false information and even calls for the entire island population to be effectively eradicated.

Brain Freeze plays upon A Night of the Living Dead and its rich social commentary while carving out its own unique path. You see, the infected’s DNA has been altered, as well, allowing for grass to grow and thrive on their skin and inside their organs — holding up a mirror to Mother Nature and how we, as a society, have and continue to exploit the earth’s deteriorating soil for our own selfish gains. Perhaps it’s all too far gone, and there’s no turning back from the mess we’ve made. Or, on a more hopeful note, we can course correct and inject a little life and vitality back into the source of all creation. Knafo presents such a dilemma, nestled comfortably beneath foliage-like conversations around our need to share every minute part of our lives online and our collective complacency on things that actually matter.

On its own, Brain Freeze is amusing and heart-felt — but with a sequel set-up, you begin to wonder what kind of world lies within Knafo’s creative genius and beyond the shoreline. And I can’t possibly wait to see what’s up his sleeve next.

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