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Movie Review: Brain on Fire (Netflix)
June 22, 2018 Sidney Morgan
BRAIN ON FIRE
Starring: Chloë Grace Moretz, Thomas Mann, Richard Armitage, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jenny Slate, Tyler Perry
Director: Gerard Barrett
Writer: Gerard Barrett (screenplay), Susannah Cahalan (memoir)
Reviewed by Sidney Morgan
This review CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS.
The human body is a phenomenal piece of evolutionary marvel. Want to move forward? No conscious though needed, yet the electrical stimulus to make sure both legs move while maintaining balance is sent and baring a clumsy or clutzy moment. Voilà, you’re walking. And though incredible advances have been made to understand it, so much is still unknown, especially when it comes to matters of the brain. So when something does go wrong, we are left to look on helplessly at its oft ravaging effects, waiting for an explanation.
Brain on Fire, based on Susannah Cahalan’s memoir Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness stars Chloë Grace Moretz as Susannah. A woman whose life takes a serious stumble as she suddenly begins to experience inexplicable erratic behaviours. She’s a vibrant, young 21-year-old woman who lives in New York City. She’s working at her dream job as a writer for the New York Post. She meets Stephen (Thomas Mann), a young man whose own dream is to become a musician. But her happiness is cut short as she begins to suffer seizures, memory loss, and delusions among other symptoms. What follows is a journey into her condition, which worsens with every passing day. Standing helplessly by her side are her mother and father, who are divorced, as well as her boyfriend, Stephen.
Whether you enjoy the movie depends entirely on the approach, you take watching it. This isn’t a movie about the search for a cure like in Lorenzo’s Oil. Nor is it about alternative ways to make patients feel better as Robin Williams did in Patch Adams. It isn’t about a miracle drug as in Awakenings. There certainly aren’t any supernatural occurrences as in Flatliners. Brain on Fire is about Susannah and her terrifying journey from being a fun, joyful young woman, to a catatonic patient in a hospital. A woman whose life is slowly drifting away due to a lack of proper diagnosis. It’s also about the helplessness of love ones unable to help. They try to support her while fighting a rigid medical system to do more and find the cause of her illness.
The movie is also an indictment against parts of the medical system. When Susannah begins to see her doctor, he’s perplexed as all of her physical signs point to a perfectly healthy young woman. Instead of digging deeper, he simply diagnoses her as lacking sleep and drinking too much (though she tells him specifically she has perhaps one drink per night). He’s “seen this so many times before.” When the parents get involved, he sings them the same song. After all the tests at the hospital, knowing they have no idea what is going on. The team of doctors try to brush her condition away as a psychiatric one. It takes angry parents pushing for the truth for them to finally admit they have no clue what’s wrong with Susannah. How many other people are misdiagnosed?
Chloë Grace Moretz gives a brilliant performance as Susannah. Her metronome like transformation from manic to calm, from joyous to depressed, from grasping her reality to being delusional is well done, and frankly frightening, as this actually happened. She’s been fun to watch in previous movies, and Brain on Fire is no exception. Without this kind of performance, the movie wouldn’t have worked as the supporting cast, which is made up of well-known actors, gave mixed ones.
I was disappointed in the portrayal of Susannah’s family. Richard Armitage is a good actor. I liked him in The Hobbit, as well as in Berlin Station, but portraying a distraught father wasn’t his forte. There was one touching scene between him and Thomas Mann (Stephan) but was better at showing anger and defiance. Carrie-Anne Moss, great in other works, including The Matrix, was too calm and too detached, never really showing the devastating toll this took on her. Perhaps I’m biased because I love The Exorcist. Ellen Burstyn’s outstanding and emotionally charged reaction to her daughter’s complete change in behaviour felt real and believable.
Thomas Mann was good as the ‘stand-by-you-through-thick-and-thin’ boyfriend. Trying to reach her through his music was well done. I was on the fence with Tyler Perry, who was a caricature of J. Jonah Jamison (he was missing the cigar), but also showed kind moments when he worried about Susannah. Standing out among them was Jenny Slate’s performance as Margo, Susannah’s colleague who looks out for her like an older sister would. Her visit to the hospital is one of the rawest scenes in the movie and highlighted the full impact of Susannah’s condition.
Verdict: WATCH IT.
Brain on Fire is a one man’s interpretation of Susannah Cahalan’s rapid descent from vibrant, youthful optimism to a catatonic state. It isn’t the first movie, nor the best, that tries to give viewers a glimpse of some affliction’s impact on its victim and their loved ones. But Chloë Grace Moretz’s performance alone is a reason to watch. Just don’t expect a story about anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis (Susannah’s affliction), nor about its cure. This is Susannah’s story.
Sidney Morgan
http://www.roguesportal.com/movie-review-brain-fire-netflix/Zitat:
Brain on Fire
Movie review by Renee Schonfeld, Common Sense Media
2/5
age 13+
Brain condition ravages young reporter's life; swearing.
PG-13 2018 95 minutes
Common Sense is a nonprofit organization. Your purchase helps us remain independent and ad-free.
A lot or a little?
The parents' guide to what's in this movie.
What parents need to know
Parents need to know that Brain on Fire is a based on Susannah Cahalan's same-named memoir. As a talented young reporter on the staff of the NY Post, Cahalan (Chloe Grace Moretz) begins exhibiting unusual behavior and experiencing strange physical symptoms. With no diagnosis apparent, she and her loved ones are left without hope of recovery ... until the arrival of a brilliant doctor who refuses to give up. Cahalan's behavior is volatile at times; she's out of control and subject to violent seizures. Swearing includes use of "s--t," "ass," " hell," and "d--k." A young couple kisses and embraces; it's implied that they've slept together. In one humorous scene, a young man is nude, his genitals covered by the guitar he plays. Both the memoir and the film were created in the hopes of educating the public about anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a rare autoimmune disorder.
What's the story?
Susannah Cahalan (Chloe Grace Moretz) has everything to look forward to in BRAIN ON FIRE. Celebrating her 21st birthday with her divorced parents, Tom (Richard Armitage) and Rhona (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Stephen (Thomas Mann), the young man she's fallen in love with, is wonderful. Her "cub" reporter job at the NY Post is everything she hoped it would be. Nothing has prepared the bright young woman for the tragedy that is about to transpire. An onslaught of strange behavior -- sometimes manic, sometimes depressed, as well as sounds magnified and voices besieging her -- are troublesome at first and then cannot be ignored. Violent seizures follow. And though she tries to minimize the condition and carry on, the behavior escalates, soon becoming out of control. Her loving parents are close at her side, as is Stephen, but thorough medical examinations and hospital visits cannot stop the family's growing desperation. Only when it appears that there's no medical explanation for Susannah's condition and that she may have to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital for an indeterminate time does one special doctor join the medical team and refuse to give up.
Is it any good?
Kudos to the real-life Susannah Cahalan and the creative team for bringing a little-known but harrowing medical condition to light, but the movie as a dramatic film simply doesn't stand up. A good portion of Brain on Fire is devoted to Susannah's behavior and growing anguish as her rare brain disorder takes hold. It really happened. But watching sequence after sequence of an assault on her mind by sounds, voices, and increasingly erratic behavior in the workplace and at home becomes repetitious and even the chilling seizures lose their impact. Chloe Grace Moretz does the best she can with this grown-up role after a series of resounding successes as a child and teen actress. Supporting players are fine but are given little to play beyond the situation at hand. Still, if what the final words that appear on screen are true, Cahalan's memoir has had a major impact on diagnoses of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, and that's a remarkable outcome.
Talk to your kids about ...
Families can talk about the differences between telling a true story in documentary form and telling that story in a fictionalized version with actors and scripted dialogue. Which are you most likely to watch? Why? Do you think fictionalizing a true story invites a wider audience?
In making a fictional film based on a true story like Brain on Fire, there are always some liberties that must be taken. For example, no one has written down dialogue from a scene that actually took place; it has to be "re-created." How much license are you comfortable with? Where might you go to get more detailed true information?
Susannah Cahalan wrote a book (memoir) about her illness, so if you were aware that it was a true story, you knew that it would end well. Does knowing how a film will resolve spoil the experience of viewing it? What makes a film "journey" enjoyable despite its predictability?
What character strengths did Susannah exhibit in this film? Her parents? Stephen? Why were these qualities essential for Susannah's recovery?
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/brain-on-fireZitat:
Brain on Fire Review
By David Duprey On Jun 24, 2018
3,5/5
Brain on Fire is a 2018 biographical drama about a young, capable professional who cannot explain her newly erratic behavior.
The true story of reporter Susannah Cahalan is a fascinating, if not terribly worrisome, the young woman at the center of rare medical condition that baffled nearly everyone – including doctors – around her. With Gerard Barrett‘s latest effort, based on Cahalan’s book of her ordeal, we are introduced to the troubling breakdown that left her in a frightful spiral, but the film, despite a solid lead performance, is all too superficial in its investigation of her condition, greatly missing an opportunity to make this a far more profoundly moving experience.
Twenty-four-year-old Susan Cahalan (Chloë Grace Moretz) has her dream job as a young reporter for the New York Post, settling into the big city with new boyfriend Stephen (Thomas Mann), himself a burgeoning musician. She’s doing well in her job, making friends with seasoned investigator Margo (Jenny Slate) and making headway with editor Richard (Tyler Perry). However, she’s been feeling a little strange of late suffering from small headaches, blurred vision, memory lapses, over sleeping … stuff she doesn’t take too seriously until she train wrecks an important interview with a senator. This eventually leads to a seizure and finally a visit to a hospital where doctors put her through a series of rigorous tests but remain unable to figure out what’s wrong, thinking perhaps it’s schizophrenia. This puts her divorced parents Rhona (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Tom (Richard Armitage) into a tailspin of their own, struggling to find out what’s happening and what to do with their daughter.
At about 88-minutes, Brain on Fire is decidedly thin in its development of who Susan is, putting a bulk of the film’s weight on Susan’s numerous increasingly-troubling episodes, most of which occur at work where she soon spirals into a chaotic mess. Admittedly, Moretz does what she can, shifting between bouts of emotional swings and outright drop-to-the-floor spasms, hoping to give Susan’s affliction some depth and meaning. However, the film is never as deeply an engrossing experience as it feel it could be, dutifully clinging to many tropes of the medical malady genre, moving from one scene to the other in an almost obligatory fashion.
There are some genuinely good moments that shine, with good work from Slate as a confused mentor and both Moss and Armitage beefing up the drama when the screenplay allows them. However, Barratt is more interested in the calamity of Susan’s wild swings, focusing a lot of attention on the breakdown, which assuredly has its due place, but the film is weakened by its tepid approach. It’s not until the last fifteen or so minutes when we finally get to meet Dr. Najjar (Navid Negahban, in a terrific performance), who arrives with some turn in the diagnosis, something I wish had been come upon much earlier. His exploration and treatment of Susan are easily the most fascinating of the story and should have been the core pillar of the film.
Brain on Fire condenses much into its short runtime, stripping away what might have been a more gripping examination of its subject. Think of Penny Marshall‘s deeply moving 1990 biographical drama Awakenings, which put the emphasis on the doctor/patient relationship rather than the long set up to what led them together. It’s a little unfair, I know, to compare as such, but it illustrates where Brain on Fire might have been a more compelling film. As it is, we get a straight-forward, textbook movie that offers very little behind the curtain of what was surely a truly harrowing experience.
http://www.thatmomentin.com/brain-on-fire-review/Zitat:
Netflixable? Chloe Grace Moretz is a reporter suffering from a mystery illness in “Brain on Fire”
Posted on June 22, 2018 by rogerinorlando
They used to be called “disease of the week,” melodramas about some heroine or hero fighting a strange, usually deadly illness filmed and consigned to the weak midweek time-slots of network TV.
Not all of them migrated to Lifetime.
“Brain on Fire” didn’t get theatrical release, even though at one time Charlize Theron was slated to do it. It still attracted a solid B-list cast, now headed by Chloe Grace Moretz, and made it to the Toronto Film Festival after completion. And now it’s on Netflix.
Susannah Cahalan (Moretz) is barely done narrating her pleasure at having “my dream job at the New York Post,” at 21 (the real Cahalan was a slightly-more-realistic 24), just finished joking around with her more worldly colleague (Jenny Slate) who calls her “”So bright-eyed I need major sunglasses right now,” with the “get OUTTA my office” gruff-bemused bark of her editor (Tyler Perry) ringing in her ears when it hits her.
She zones out at her 21st birthday party. She glazes over, lies to cover, confesses to “not being myself,” and coughs — a lot.
Before she knows it, she is “trapped in your own body, lost in your own mind.”
Her musician-boyfriend (Thomas Mann, oh so bland) doesn’t quite take her symptoms seriously.
“Hungover? You’re not PREGNANT, are you?”
In interviews, she seems stoned. Colleagues tease her, but the camera captures “concern.” Of course it does. That doesn’t keep her editor from blowing his stack (Well played, Mr. Perry).
And thus begins the medical mystery — bed bugs, “any history of Lyme Disease?” “Stroke? “Blood clot?” “MRI?”
Filmmaker Gerard Barrett visualizes her growing confusion, sleepless madness and isolation. She sweats, freaks out at the slightest noise and then…convulsions.
The film limits itself to the alarm any of us would feel when we don’t know what’s happening. Meltdowns from her divorced parents (“Do you CARE for her, or not?”), pushing the live-in beau aside, mass confusion and the ripple effects of this disruption — to her life, her love, her career, her family — all are staged with a kind of perfunctory chilliness.
Carrie Anne Moss, playing her mother, plays the most interesting variation of concern. She probes, suspects her child is doing that overwhelmed/stressed-out/flip-out thing she might have seen before. Maybe she’s drinking. Maybe drugs. And then, another seizure and focused, fretful mom kicks in — never quite matching her ex’s (Richard Armitage) testy impatience with the medical establishment.
The lack of answers makes one and all a little crazy, and from the reactions from her family you wonder just what they’ve seen in her behavior before.
There’s a puzzling passivity that plays out among almost everybody else, right up to the moment Cahalan just…loses it. Moretz takes this so far over the bipolar top in these moments you cannot believe the white-suited guys with the straight-jackets aren’t called.
That’s when “Brain on Fire” loses its footing in reality. Colleagues take her tirade indulgently and seriously. Seriously? After that “performance?””
“I’m bipolar.”
“How do you know that?”
“I Googled it.”
Moretz has been an actress to watch since playing the too-wise, supportive little sister in “(500) Days of Summer,” the worldwise female friend of the “Wimpy Kid” crowd and then Hit-Girl to Nic Cage’s Big Daddy in “Kick-Ass.”
This role probably calls for her least subtle work, and we never for a second see this as anything other than a performance. It contrasts too much with the calmly passive-even- after-they’re-scared-witless parents (Armitage’s tirades notwithstanding).
The one “funny” element to the character is her determination to self-diagnose. Susannah corrects every medical professional who offers an opinion with this or that new theory that she’s certain is fact. She keeps Googling.
Barrett doesn’t save Moretz with more effects and moments that show her mania from inside her head. It’s all externals, vexing seizures, tantrums and manic outbursts. Something more like “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” might have worked.
And the script doesn’t help her by creating more empathy for Cahalan, more connection with parents, boyfriend and medical professionals (unsympathetic, many of them). It all feels so perfunctory, a string of characters with no “arc.”
Compare this to “The Big Sick” or “Lorenzo’s Oil” or any of a legion of similar films, and the emotional disconnect sticks in the craw. Best selling memoir or not, it’s probable that this story, where the mania needs a softer edge, where the confrontations between parents and the Medical Establishment are the real drama, was not really good fodder for a feature film, “disease of the week” or not.
1half-star
MPAA Rating:PG-13 for thematic elements, brief language and partial nudity
Cast: Chloe Grace Moretz, Jenny Slate, Thomas Mann, Tyler Perry, Carrie-Ann Moss, Navid Negahban
Credits:Directed by Gerard Barrett, script by Gerard Barrett, based on the Susannah Cahalan memoir. A Broadgreen/Netflix release.
Running time: 1:29
https://rogersmovienation.com/2018/06/22/netflixable-chloe-grace-moretz-is-a-reporter-suffering-from-a-mystery-illness-in-brain-on-fire/Zitat:
Stream It or Skip It: ‘Brain on Fire’ on Netflix Puts Chloe Grace Moretz Through the Wringer
By
sirben -
June 22, 2018 56
Netflix’s latest, Brain on Fire, stars Chloe Grace Moretz in a movie about a young woman who’s brain appears to be under siege. Based on the real-life story of journalist Susannah Cahalen, the film — produced in part by Charlize Theron — offers its lead actress ample opportunities to dig into a fraught and suffering character. In the right kind of film, it’s a great showcase for an actress. In the wrong kind of film, it could be a disaster. Which way does the wind blow for this one?
BRAIN ON FIRE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Susannah Cahalen (Moretz) is an ambitious young reporter at the New York Post when she starts to come down with strange symptoms. Head fuzziness, numbness, lack of concentration, sleepless nights, all which eventually give way to things like hearing voices and seizures. She deep-sixes her job at the Post, despite concerned editors (Tyler Perry) and co-workers (Jenny Slate), and her divorced parents (Carrie-Ann Moss and Richard Armitage) and boyfriend (Thomas Mann) don’t know how to help her either. Initially suspected to be everything from exhaustion (you know how those young girls like to party) to bipolar disorder to schizophrenia, Susannah continues to struggle, eventually falling into a catatonic state before doctors can dig deep and figure out the real cause of her illness.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The problem with Brain on Fire is that it’s halfway reminiscent of a lot of different movies, because it’s never quite sure who it needs its protagonist to be. Initially, the film plays like The Exorcist if all the doctors telling Regan that she was suffering from a brain disorder were right. You halfway expect her to start floating in her bed at some point. Later, the film becomes about Susannah desperately trying to convince the people in her life that she’s really sick. There’s a touch of Todd Haynes’ Safe in there as Susannah appears to be aggressed by everything in her life as an unseen and unknown ailment ravages at her. But later, as Susannah disappears further into whatever brain disorder she has, the film’s perspective shifts to her loved ones and her doctors. Here’s where things start to feel like an episode of House or those old disease-of-the-week TV movies. It takes some really strong, Sarandon-in-Lorenzo’s-Oil-level acting to carry a movie like this and make it feel cinema-worthy, and nobody in Brain on Fire is working on that level, unfortunately. And so with the character we thought was our anchor gone, the film drifts away from the audience just at the point when it should be its most compelling.
Performance Worth Watching: This space should be reserved for Chloe Grace Moretz, as she’s getting a huge showcase her abilities. The story even writes her a bit of a blank check to go over the top, given her diagnoses. But though the script and direction aren’t much help either, Moretz falls well short of making her character feel compelling in the early, pre-symptom stages or feel real once the disease really takes ahold of her. The best performance in the film comes from the perpetually underrated Carrie-Ann Moss, as Susannah’s mother. She’s an oasis of quietly controlled fear and concern that is a welcome relief given how crazed Moretz’s acting feels.
Memorable Dialogue: This is the kind of script that depicts Susannah’s manic and depressive episodes by having her say “I’m so happy” and “I’m unhappy,” so that’s not good. And there is some perfunctory, YA-esque narration going on as well, which feels very much like a studio note from someone who’d just seen The Fault in Our Stars. So this is not a super well-written movie over all. In other circumstances, having the doctor who ultimately makes the correct diagnosis whisper to the catatonic Susannah “I found you” would be unbearably cheesy, but here, it’s at least a welcome emotional spike.
Single Best Shot: Given everything else in this movie that feels unconvincing, I have to give it up to one shot in the middle of the film that feels genuinely unsettling. Home alone amid her mother’s (gorgeous, Nancy Meyers-worthy) kitchen, a visibly agitated Susannah begins slicing an orange. Given everything we know about her mental state, it is incredibly stressful watching her use an intimidatingly sharp chef’s knife to carve so uncarefully into this fruit. It’s the most suspenseful and best scene of the movie.
Our Take: It’s a wonder that every screenwriter in America hasn’t written some version of this movie after a bad experience with an inattentive doctor or a misdiagnosis. That kind of frustration is nearly universal. Yet Brain on Fire never communicates that frustration all that well to the audience. This one falls short on pretty much every level, from the acting to the pacing to the tone. It’s the kind of movie that does a billion little irritating things that add up to something worse. It’s the kind of movie where the significance of the title isn’t revealed until the end, at which point we’re so past beyond caring. It’s the kind of movie where the underdeveloped boyfriend character is a musician because the real-life boyfriend was a musician, even though that doesn’t end up adding anything to the film. In the end, this is a movie where the villain ends up being a disease no one knew was there until the final 10 minutes. You keep waiting for the movie to be about something else as well: a rallying family, a young woman struggling for respect in her field, something. In the end, we remain waiting.
Our Call: Skip It. There’s a reason this waited two years since its Toronto premiere to make it to American audiences.
http://mwbuzz.com/index.php/stream-it-or-skip-it-brain-on-fire-on-netflix-puts-chloe-grace-moretz-through-the-wringer/Zitat:
Kritik der FILMSTARTS-Redaktion
1,5
enttäuschend
Feuer im Kopf
Von Manuel Berger
Mit ihrer Bestseller-Autobiografie „Feuer im Kopf“ schuf die Journalistin Susannah Cahalan 2012 Aufmerksamkeit für eine bis dato kaum bekannte Krankheit: Anti-NMDA-Rezeptor-Enzephalitis, bei der sich der Körper gleichsam selbst vernichtet, indem er das Gehirn „bekämpft“. Eine Diagnose ist oft nur möglich, wenn gezielt nach diesem seltenen Leiden gesucht wird, weshalb Betroffenen – so zumindest der Tenor in Gerard Barretts Verfilmung von Cahalans Buch – oft völlige physische Gesundheit und bei schlimmer werdenden Symptomen schließlich eine psychische Störung attestiert wird. Die Auserzählung des kontinuierlichen Verfalls eines Menschen ist prädestiniert für eindringliche Schauspielerleistungen, die gerne mit Auszeichnungen bedacht werden. Kein Wunder, dass sich mit Charlize Theron eine namhafte Darstellerin als Produzentin die Filmrechte an der Geschichte sicherte und „Feuer im Kopf“ zumindest auf dem Papier gut besetzt ist. Tatsächlich ist das Drama aber ein Reinfall und eher ein Kandidat für die Goldene Himbeere als für den Oscar. Da hilft auch die hehre Aufklärungsintention nicht viel.
Susannah (Chloë Grace Moretz) steht am Anfang einer vielversprechenden Karriere als Journalistin bei der New York Post – ihr Traumjob. Auch im Privatleben läuft es gut, denn sie ist frisch verliebt in den Musiker Stephen (Thomas Mann). Doch gerade als ihr Chef Richard (Tyler Perry) sie mit verantwortungsvolleren Aufgaben als bisher betraut, werfen plötzliche Anfälle, Halluzinationen, generelle Ermattung und Stimmungsschwankungen Susannah aus der Bahn. Verschiedene Ärzte bescheinigen ihr trotzdem, sie sei kerngesund und sehen als Ursache eine ungute Kombination aus Stress und Partys. Doch Susannahs Zustand verschlechtert sich immer weiter…
Man merkt dem Film durchaus an, dass Regisseur Gerard Barrett („Glassland“) sich an intensiven Krankheitsdramen wie Todd Haynes‘ „Safe“ oder „Die Entdeckung der Unendlichkeit“ von James Marsh orientiert hat. Er bemüht sich um eine seriöse Aufarbeitung von Susannahs Leiden, hält sich aber zu sehr mit den Symptomen auf. Er zeichnet vor allem ein Krankheitsbild, während Haynes und Marsh ihr Hauptaugenmerk auf die von dem Leiden betroffenen Menschen richten, wobei sie beide auch von außergewöhnlichen Schauspielerleistungen profitieren. Barrett dagegen, der auch das Drehbuch zu „Feuer im Kopf“ verfasst hat, verleiht seinen Figuren nicht genügend Substanz und so können die Zuschauer kaum einen emotionalen Bezug zu ihnen herstellen.
Hauptdarstellerin Chloë Grace Moretz („Kick-Ass“) wiederum scheint das Versäumnis ihres Regisseurs im Alleingang ausgleichen zu wollen, indem sie die leidende Susannah mit größtmöglicher Intensität verkörpert. Dabei überspannt sie allerdings wiederholt den Bogen und strapaziert mit extremem Overacting mehr als einmal die Geduld des Publikums. Dass ihre Bemühungen zuweilen unbeholfen wirken, liegt aber auch ganz entscheidend daran, dass die Frage „Wer ist diese Susannah eigentlich?“ von Barrett geflissentlich ignoriert wird, und Moretz daher mehr oder weniger im luftleeren Raum agiert. Damit wirkt sie deutlich überfordert: Jede Bewegung, jeder Gesichtsausdruck und jedes Wort fällt übertrieben aus, wobei ihr alsbald die Ideen auszugehen scheinen und sie immer wieder die gleichen Grimassen schneidet.
Abgesehen von harten Fakten – ambitionierte Zeitungsjournalistin, in einer Beziehung, getrennte Eltern – erfahren wir nichts über die Protagonistin. Stattdessen beginnt Barrett bereits nach fünf Minuten eine schier endlose Aneinanderreihung von Szenen, die den Verfall der jungen Protagonistin veranschaulichen. Die von Müdigkeit geplagte junge Susannah läuft orientierungslos durch die Stadt, die unter Stimmungsschwankungen leidende Susannah hüpft auf den Bürotisch und schreit ihre Kollegen an, und die inzwischen auch paranoide Susannah versucht nach der Einlieferung ins Krankenhaus mehrere Personen dazu zu überreden, sie wieder hinauszuschmuggeln.
In solchen überdramatisierten Krankheitsszenen sehen wir eine junge Frau, die längst von der Gehirnentzündung und ihren Folgen beherrscht wird, aber da wir die gesunde Susannah nicht kennengelernt haben, können wir ihr Verhalten weder richtig einschätzen noch wirklich mit ihr mitleiden. Die Figur ist vollkommen unausgereift und auch Richard Armitage („Der Hobbit“) und Carrie-Anne Moss („Matrix“) bekommen in ihren Nebenrollen als Susannahs Eltern kein besseres Material. Sie definieren sich über Aussagen wie „Wir müssen stark sein“ und „Ich brauche dich, Susannah braucht dich“.
Mit seiner eindimensionalen und bisweilen effekthascherischen Inszenierung (vor allem die Musik und ihr Einsatz drücken klischeehaft und manipulativ auf die Tränendrüse) wirkt das Ganze oft eher wie eine schlechte Seifenoper als wie ein prominent besetzter Hollywood-Kinofilm und es gipfelt in einer mit Zeitlupe aufgebauschten Verfolgungsjagd durchs Hospital. Angesichts der zu Beginn ausführlich zelebrierten Verschlimmerung der Krankheit wirken die letzten Wendungen des Films dann noch einmal besonders wenig nachvollziehbar und wie auf dem Weg dahin auch noch Ärzte dämonisiert werden, gibt dem Film dann auch eine ärgerliche Note.
Fazit: „Feuer im Kopf“ basiert auf einer tragischen Geschichte. Doch von dieser Tragik landet bei diesem emotionslosen, eindimensionalen und effekthascherischen Drama nur sehr wenig auf der Leinwand beziehungsweise auf dem Bildschirm.
http://www.filmstarts.de/kritiken/228729/kritik.html