BRAINJACKED

Writer-producer -director Andrew Allan's film opens with a fantastically stylish and gory scene of someone ripping their own skull open to reveal their gore-soaked brain. It certainly grabs the attention!

Then we're flung into a spot of group sex, as witnessed by confused teenager Tristan (Chris Jackson). It's his family home where it's all happening, his widowed mother is the gangbang centrepiece and his stepdad is the protagonist. But Tristan's not welcome and is swiftly turfed out when he attempts to curtail the fun.

Homeless and suffering from hideous migraines, he manages to stagger in the dead of night to a park bench where he plans to spend the night. At that moment an angelic figure arrives in the form of pretty blonde Laney (Somali Rose).

She warms to Tristan instantly and points to the circular red scar on her forehead, telling him she knows what he's going through and she can direct him to a place that can help him out. With surprisingly few questions, Tristan follows Laney to a futuristic bunker where he meets several others with similar marks on their foreheads.

Laney introduces Tristan to Dr Karas (Rod Grant) and persuades the shady neurosurgeon to bestow his gift upon the wayward youth.

And so, Tristan is ushered willingly but unwittingly into an operation room in preparation for what is promised will be a cure to all of his problems. Karas is even good enough to let Tristan witness someone else receive the treatment first: a drill through a specific part of the skull, releasing pressure on the brain and thus prompting a sense of perpetual elation.

It's a genuine practice - trepanning, or trepanation. But I would advise against people trying it at home. Well, not on yourself.

Back to the film, and young Tristan is horrified to observe as Karas drills into a fellow man's forehead. Well, as much as we all love the horror genre, there aren't many of us - myself included - who can get away with the sight of blood ...

So, Tristan resists Karas' offer of trepanation to begin with. But the migraines continue in the meantime.

Eventually, of course, he gives in to temptation and finds that trepanation makes him such a happier person. What's more, he begins to notice that so many people in everyday lives bear similar scars.

But then it all starts going awry. Laney begins acting weird, Karas starts looking more and more like Eli Roth, and the friendly faces Tristan has warmed to within the neurosurgeon's underground dwelling are behaving worryingly like some kind of commune ...

Original, stylish and imaginatively photographed, BRAINJACKED is an easy watch because it's constantly entertaining. It looks and feels very much like an early-90s Frank Hennenlotter effort. I suppose drawing a comparison to early Cronenberg is obvious, but I hesitate to use him as a reference - this isn't in the same league as even his earliest body horror films.

BRAINJACKED is certainly gory though, in that 80s splatter style, and moves in some satisfyingly surprising directions in the latter half: it's impossible to predict where it will be headed, and all the more enjoyable for it.

Of course, the trappings of low budget cinema are here. The acting is iffy, the FX are hit-and-miss (some sequences of general carnage are good, but the actual head-drilling scenes are not a patch on that show-stopping moment that we all remember from THE DRILLER KILLER) and the running time is filled by too many neon-lit softcore sex scenes.

I'll look out for Allan in future though, definitely. This is a promising early directorial effort from the guy who had the good sense to produce Herschell Gordon Lewis' THE UH-OH SHOW.

The screener disc from Unearthed is an early one and as such has no menus or extras.

Picture quality was decent enough, with strong colours and a fair amount of detail evident. Darker scenes were not as clear as they could have been but overall the presentation was a good one.

English 2.0 was clear and consistent throughout.

I'm not sure how many chapters the retail disc will offer, but the screener disc gave out 19 chapters to its main feature.

As mentioned above, there was no bonus material on the screener disc. However, the retail disc is set to include a plethora of goodies which include three audio commentary tracks, a behind-the-scenes featurette, a short film, a location tour and trailers.

BRAINJACKED is a frequently surprising little film that strives to be different. For that reason alone, I think it's worth commending. It's not always successful at what it does - the plot becomes messy and the performances are not always on the money - but if you're feeling in a forgiving mood and on the lookout for something quirky but gory too, this is well worth a look.

It's nice to see Unearthed furnishing modern stuff with such worthy DVD releases too. And people are saying the format is dead? Not a chance, on the evidence of this.

Review by Stuart Willis