It
is tough having a sci-fi fan for a kid.
They are always going on about alien invasions and the like. One little girl’s parents lose patience with
her crazy Mars talk in Sid Zanforlin’s short film, Attack of the Brainsucker (trailer here), which screens
during the 2012 Fantasia Festival.
Samantha
Delormier enjoys giving herself paranoid nightmares, like the one that opens
the film. After all, that is exactly what
monsters from space are good for. Her
parents do not share her enthusiasm.
Frankly, they are getting rather tired of her oddball expressions of
fandom. In truth, their discontent stems
from a dirty family secret. It was
Samantha’s older brother Robbie who first introduced his sister to the world of
cult sci-fi. The senior Delormier
sibling no longer lives with the family.
He has been put away someplace out of sight. However, he has come back this dark and
stormy night to look after his beloved sister.
Or has he?
Brainsucker’s dirty little
secret is that it is a really a social issue film masquerading as a retro genre
pastiche. It might be a particular
downer for Fantasia patrons, considering how likely they are to identify with
little Samantha. At least it looks
great. Production designer Katka Hubacek’s
team must have called in favors with all their geek-collector friends, filling
every nook and cranny of Samantha’s bedroom with vintage 1960’s-era memorabilia.
