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Brain on Fire follows Cahalan (Moretz), a rising journalist at the New York Post who mysteriously starts having seizures and hearing voices. As weeks go by and Susannah rapidly descends into insanity, she moves inexplicably from violence to catatonia. Following a series of outbursts, misdiagnoses and a prolonged hospital stay, a lucky last-minute intervention by one doctor finally gives her a diagnosis and hope to rebuild her life.
The medical misfire Brain On Fire is based on a true story and apparently its producers thought this was sufficient reason to breathe life into the project. It is not.
It's the sort of role for which the Razzies were invented, and what little audience it finds will almost certainly be heckling as they watch Moretz implode.
Despite the fact that Susannah eventually manages to claw her way back from the brink of madness, this is a downbeat slog of a film which tells a not particularly involving story.
The true-life medical drama is less likely to bring awareness to a very rare autoimmune disorder than it is to be consumed as a low-rent imitator of Safe, Todd Haynes' 1995 parable.
We watch Chloe Grace Moretz's epic meltdown from a bored distance, until the drama remembers its lost calling as a disease-of-the-week movie. At that point, we receive the abrupt news of a cure with an indifferent shrug.