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Quintessential if not classic Cronenberg, Crimes of the Future finds the director revisiting familiar themes with typically unsettling flair.Read critic reviews
Audience Says
It has a creative concept and some interesting ideas, but Crimes of the Future might feel like punishment if you aren't a big Cronenberg fan.Read audience reviews
Watch Crimes of the Future with a subscription on Hulu, rent on Vudu, Apple TV, Prime Video, or buy on Vudu, Apple TV, Prime Video.
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As the human species adapts to a synthetic environment, the body undergoes new transformations and mutations. With his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux), Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), celebrity performance artist, publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances. Timlin (Kristen Stewart), an investigator from the National Organ Registry, obsessively tracks their movements, which is when a mysterious group is revealed... Their mission -- to use Saul's notoriety to shed light on the next phase of human evolution.
Production Co:
Ingenious Media,
Rocket Science,
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
Serendipity Point Films,
Téléfilm Canada,
Bell Media,
The Harold Greenberg Fund,
Argonauts,
Coficiné,
Wiffle Films,
Ekome
Imagine an erotic novel written by Franz Kafka or by Philip K Dick, narrated in a very careful and calm way, but relating incredibly cryptic, obscene and basically very loquacious matters. Cronenberg is an author capturing his existential and artistic dilemmas throughout a conspiracy-science-fiction-neo noir thriller about transhumanism. Insane and labyrinthine ideas like those of Borges or Nabokov. One last defiant act of the teacher towards his pupils (Julia Ducornau, Gaspar Noe, Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, Guillermo Del Toro, etc.) almost blurting out "If you think what you are doing is transgressive, I invented this... and it's my turn."
A round of applause for the absolute King of Body Horror.
David Cronenberg returns to the thing David Cronenberg is best known for. It's been twenty-plus years since the director has gone back to his body horror roots, and Crimes of the Future is certainly a gross gross movie. If that's what you're hoping for, then the discomfort and bizarre sexual analogies might be a selling point for you. For me, I just felt nauseated without an interesting core to keep my mind from drifting away. In the future, people have evolved (?) pain tolerance and infection rates, so our protagonist Saul (Viggo Mortsensen) turns surgery into public performance as his assistant/lover (Lea Seydoux) removes the vestigial organs his body produces. Kirsten Stewart's antsy, horny character states that "surgery is the new sex," and you'll get plenty of parallels as we watch person after person get all squirmy while being cut open. My problem with the movie is that there isn't anything beyond the shock value. The commentarry about body experimentation as a form of sensuality feels trite and more an opening for weird moments, like when Saul gets a zipper installed across his pelvis and his assistant decides to open it and somehow pleasure this… pouch? There's a hint of an interesting movie here. Saul is being asked to serve as a confidential informant for the government hunting down an extremist group trying to kick-start evolution so that children will be able to consume plastics. That would have put our main character into a discovery role for this world that would have provided more than shock value. The movie begins, literally, with a child being suffocated by his mother, so that sets the tone as to where Cronenberg is headed. Crimes of the Future is essentially a geek show of a movie absent meaningful social/sexual commentary and interesting characters. It's more a movie of pliable body parts.
Nate's Grade: C
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