The vertiginous Brainstorm starts off in one direction, with the sadistic industrialist Cort Benson (Dana Andrews) gaslighting his employee, Jim Grayam (Jeffrey Hunter), who is having an affair with Benson's wife, Lorrie (Anne Francis). But then it turns in another direction: Benson may be trying to make Grayam think he's going mad, but Grayam may actually be insane. He plots an intricate scheme to kill Benson and get away with it, and he almost does. It's a whipsaw premise for a thriller that in the hands of Alfred Hitchcock might have been a classic. Unfortunately, William Conrad was a better character actor than director, and he doesn't quite bring it off. Part of the problem is that Hunter is a little too handsome for the role and doesn't balance the attractiveness of Grayam with enough darkness: We ought to feel more ambivalent about the character from the start. The script has some distracting inconsistencies of plot and character that a more sure-footed director might have overcome, the way Hitchcock covers up the plot holes in Vertigo (1958). There are still some good performances, especially from Viveca Lindfors as a psychiatrist who plays her own ambivalent role in Grayam's case. I think it's the off-balance narrative that has allowed Brainstorm to develop into something of a cult film after its initial rejection from the critics.
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