#42: CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

 

Written and directed by David Cronenberg. Starring Viggo Mortensen, Lea Seydox and Kristen Stewart. Music by Howard Shore. Budget $27 million. Running time 107 minutes.

Welcome to Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg's first cinema outing since 2014's Map to the Stars, and his fourth to star Viggo Mortensen.   

It's the near future and thanks to advances in biotechnology, humans have begun evolving in new and surprising ways to such an extent that pain is now a thing of the past, as is infection. Meanwhile machines/human interfaces are so common that most people sleep in organic beds and eat in special body-hugging chairs that interface with the digestive process. Meanwhile, the streets are filled with groups of people performing unsanctioned street surgery, or visiting visceral performance art installations. 

It's through Viggo Mortensen's character Saul Tenser, a world-renowned performance artist, that we are introduced to this strange new world. Saul Tenser suffers from a medical condition called Accelerated Evolution Syndrome, which means his body is constantly growing new internal organs, that are then removed by his lover, partner and video biographer Caprice (Lea Seydox) in sold-out out underground art shows. As you can imagine, this has made Tenser something of a legend in the world of internal organ growth and for two representatives of the National Organ Registry Timlin (Kristen Stewart) and Wippet (Don McKellar) in particular, who are keen to get him to register each new growth as it happens.

What they don't know is that Tenser is actually an undercover cop working with Detective Cope (Welket Bungué) to expose a radical group of radical evolutionists lead by Lang Dotrice (Scott Speedman).

Throw into that mix a televised child autopsy, a beauty pageant for the insides, and a couple of murderers armed with cordless power drills and what you have is the most unsettling film of the year. 

Unfortunately, despite a game cast, a superb sound track by Howard Shore, some truly impressive practical effects, and Cronenberg's exceptional eye, this is a film that sadly fails to either engage or ignite. It feels like Cronenberg, but it also feels like we've been here before and that he's already explored some of these ideas far more interestingly in films like Rabid, Videodrome, The Brood, The Fly and eXistenZ. And nothing here feels as shocking or disgustingly or as compelling as those previous tour-de-forces.

It's so wonderful so see Cronenberg making films for the big screen and it's a thrill to watch one of his unique body horror genre movies up there 10 metres tall, so it's disappointing when the film abruptly ends leaving you with more questions than you had going in. 

A shockingly visual experience that asks the big question: What if edible plastic came in toxic chocolate bars, but then fumbles the answer by tattooing the answer on the inside of someone's liver.

All that said it's still so goddam freaky and nasty that it truly deserves an 8/10