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A Spoiler Filled look at Cronenberg's eXistenZ
SPOILER ALERT !!
Here's a long... VERY SPOILERISH review that goes into detail about Cronenberg's latest. Personally I only read the last paragraph and even caught a couple of things I didn't want to see. I won't read the script and I don't want to know.... But according to Father Geek (who did read it) you should love this. The person who wrote this... didn't completely enjoy the film... but then are you ever supposed to completely enjoy a Cronenberg film? I think you are supposed to Experience Cronenberg's movies, and this one sounds from Dad's reactions to be something worth experiencing. Like anything could keep me away...
I was recently able to catch a test screening of David Cronenberg's
latest film "eXistenZ," (with a capital X and a capital Z, and
the emphasis on the "enZ") so I figured I'd send in my review.
"eXistenZ" stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law, with
smaller appearances by Ian Holm and Willem DaFoe. The plot goes
something like this: It's the not-too-distant future, and as
the movie opens, we're at a testing session for a brand new type of,
well, video game. Of course, this is the future, so video
games aren't things you play on a screen, but rather they're bizarre
flesh-colored organic lumps called game pods (that look like
fetuses, make noises like Furbies, and squirm around a bit when they're
activated) with an umbilical-cord type thing attached to
them. This cord is plugged into something called a "bioport," which is
a hole in a person's lower back that looks suspiciously
like an anus (there were more lubricated penetration shots in this movie
than most pornos -- there's even one particularly
giggle-inducing scene where Jude Law gives Jennifer Jason Leigh's
bioport a rimjob), but is actually a direct link to their spinal
cord. Thus, when the cord is plugged in, the game taps into the
person's mind, allowing a true virtual reality experience (if
you've seen "Strange Days," which Cronenberg must have, you'll know what
I'm talking about -- it's not exactly unfamiliar
territory for sci-fi movies these days).
So Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Allegra Geller, the God of game designers,
and the game testers in the opening scene just about
crap their pants when she makes an appearance at the testing session to
guide them through their first experience with her brand
new game system, called "eXistenZ." Of course, there are complications:
An underground movement called the "realists," who
dedicate their lives to destroying these virtual reality systems and
hunting down game designers like Geller (this is never
effectively explained in the movie, I picked up on it right away only
because I had read a fairly detailed plot synopsis prior to
watching the film). Thus, a realist inevitably appears during the
testing session, and starts shooting people while shouting "death
to the demoness Allegra Geller," or something to that effect (his gun,
oddly enough, is made out of flesh and bones, and shoots
human teeth -- to get past the metal detectors). In the chaos that
ensues, Geller is rushed out of the building by Jude Law,
whose character is Ted Pikul, a "PR nerd" on hand at the testing, who
ends up becoming Geller's bodyguard, as it seems that
everyone wants her dead. The two escape together and drive to a motel,
where Geller tells Pikul that her eXistenZ game pod
has been damaged, and because she just finished developing it it's the
only existing copy. Five years of work, she tells us, will
be lost if she can't repair the system, but for some reason the only way
to do that is to play the game with someone friendly
("Are you friendly?" she asks Pikul seductively. "Well, are you?").
But Pikul has never played these high tech video games
because of his fear of getting a hole punched in his back, which I think
is understandable. Geller convinces Pikul to help her,
however, and lucky for him, you can get a bioport installed in any
shopping mall, "just like getting your ear pierced." But it's
late at night, and apparently his participation in the game is very
urgent, so he gets an "illegal and unregistered" bioport from a
24-hour gas station employee. Sounds goofy? Well, it is. I won't
reveal what happens at the gas station, but it begins a long
and tiresome chain of double-crossings, attempts on Geller's life, and
the eXistenZ game pod being broken and fixed again.
This all eventually leads to Pikul and Geller playing the game together,
and after all this waiting to see what this game's all about, it's a bit
of a disappointment, especially since the rest of the movie is spent in
the game. Of course, the theme of the realists
continues in the game in a way that doesn't really make sense. What
happens in the game seems to have little comprehensible
connection to what was happening to these people when they entered the
game, and on more than one occasion I found myself
wishing the game would end for a while so all the running around from
evil realists in real life could continue. But is it real life at
all? The movie plays so many "wait a minute, that wasn't actually
reality" tricks that by the end of the movie (which is kind of a
cop-out, though with a somewhat satisfying twist) I found myself not
really caring anymore.
There was also the unavoidable element of cheese, which came mostly in
the form of goofy techno words like "bioport," "jack
in," "neurosurge," "game pod," etc. and some silly lines of dialogue
here and there. The acting wasn't particularly a problem
(though I can't say this was anywhere near the best performances by any
of the actors involved), but I never got a sense that
either of the main actors (especially Jude Law, who sounds a bit goofy
when hiding his english accent) really felt any more
involved in this world of "eXistenZ" than I did. Their characters were
written poorly, as well. Geller, who we were supposed
to sympathize with, was mostly an annoying bitch in real life. She also
didn't seem to know anything about this game she spent
five years creating, she fumbled around in it with no more sense of
experience than Pikul had. But Pikul was even worse, he
didn't seem to know anything about the whole world they lived in at all.
He acted like a visitor from the past, unfamiliar with
almost everything about this future world. At one point, for example,
he spots a bizarre little creature crawling on his car, and,
acting as surprised as we are to see it, says "What is that? Some kind
of big bug?" "It's a mutated amphibian," Geller explains,
and rattles off something about a combination salamander/frog/lizard
with two heads before saying, "sign of the times." What??
How could Pikul not know about these things, as if the appearance of
weird two-headed creatures wouldn't be front page
news. The creature, incidentally, serves little purpose in the film
except as a special effect. We do learn late in the movie that
the two-headed amphibians are from an assortment of mutated animals
whose organs are used to create the game pods, but
even that doesn't make much sense. It's just one of the many things
we're supposed to accept as fact in this movie, and there
are lots of plot holes as well (including a weird battle scene,
supposedly in the game, that is just ludicrous). There is also an
incredible amount of blood and gore, more than seems necessary. Some
scenes of shootings and exploding bodies and
blood-spurting bioports and whatnot are so viciously graphic that even I
was shocked, and I've got quite a tolerance built up by
now. If you're a fan of gore, however, there are a few can't-miss
scenes in this movie.
All in all, the film had some good ideas and a few decent scenes, but it
just didn't come together as a whole. Its main problem
is that it's kind of silly, and it just doesn't make a lot of sense.
For some people that problem will be resolved in the ending, but
personally I thought that the ending, despite being clever in it's own
little way, was too much of an easy way out of a confusing
plot which I was, for a while, actually becoming interested in, at least
in the respect of being curious how Cronenberg was going
to guide us out of it. "eXistenZ" was one of those movies that, for one
reason or another, just didn't feel like a real movie, and I
wasn't exactly sure at the end what I had just sat through. Further
proof, I suppose, that "we're trapped in virtual reality" plots
should probably just be avoided in the film industry.
Squee.
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The author of this article seems to have some good observations of this movie in general, but I have to wonder if he looked at it from a comparative standpoint of someone who has seen other Cronenberg movies. I didn't become a big fan of his until Videodrome hooked me on the corruption of flesh theme that saturates his work. Does this guy just not get the movie or Cronenberg's genius as a whole? Or is the film one big stinkbomb waiting to cripple David's already under-appriciated career? Personally, I don't care. I'm going in only with expectations of high gore and shock scenes. Anything more would be a very pleasant surprise for a Cronenberg fan like myself. I look foward to it. :)
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This sounds like a bad re-make of his earlier VideoDrome. Get back to what you do best, and make another Shivers.
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No. It just sounds like a big hairy turd.
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You forgot M. Butterfly. everyone forgets M. Butterfly and it is a fantastic movie. Also--I take issue with you & all the critics who overplay the "exploding heads" aspect of Scanners. That really isn't what the picture's about, and, to be fair, there are only a few exploding heads in it anyway...
I'm psyched for eXistenZ..sounds like a another great LSD parable film. I dug Crash a lot, too. -
You forgot M. Butterfly. everyone forgets M. Butterfly and it is a fantastic movie. Also--I take issue with you & all the critics who overplay the "exploding heads" aspect of Scanners. That really isn't what the picture's about, and, to be fair, there are only a few exploding heads in it anyway...
I'm psyched for eXistenZ..sounds like a another great LSD parable film. I dug Crash a lot, too. -
Everything about this picture sounds like nothing that hasn't been done before. It's sounds like TOTAL RECALL meets THE LAWNMOWER MAN. I think Cronenberg has gone to well a bit too often of late in his films. THE FLY, DEAD RINGERS, NAKED LUNCH, and M BUTTERFLY are all half-way decent movies (I hated CRASH, the film seemed pointless to me) But I think he needs to get out of the "I'll keep tricking the audience the whole time through" without giving up the trick mentality.
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If eXistenZ is half as good as VIDEODROME, I'll be masturbating in the aisles come showtime.
P.S. Doesn't anyone know how to write a review anymore? I'm sick of the 'and then they did this and then they did that' bullshit movie summaries that plague this site. -
Cronenberg misses his audience. He started out actually doing GOOD horror movies with The Brood (cable classic) and Scanners, which despite it's "exploding head" association is one of the classic horror films from that period. What he has ventured into is a pigs wallow of the wierd. If he's going to do Horror, actually SCARE people. If he's going to do Sci-Fi at least let it be believable sci-fi so the target audience will buy it. Right now Cronenberg is without a doubt a great director, but he no longer knows who he is trying to appeal to other than pompous critcs who spend hours trying to decipher the good qualities in his movies.
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"If he's going to do Horror, actually SCARE people. If he's going to do Sci-Fi at least let it be believable sci-fi so the target
audience will buy it."
First of all, why should he do this? Why can't he do his own version of horror? Do you want him to make movies like Scream? Movies that really "scare the audience"?
(I bet you were scared by it).
When it come to sci-fi, "2001", "Solaris", "Alphaville", and all the best sci-fi films did not have a TARGET AUDIENCE and the filmmaker did not need the audience to "buy it" at all. What are you talking about?
Those people (Cronenberg included) are above that shitty market thing. They are not Spielbergs or Camerons. They do what they want to and it's up for the audience to like it (and understant it, which almost never happens) or not. Like Cronenberg once said:
"There is a universe of sockets, but we all have different plugs. We can't all plug into the same socket. The art is to get other people to plug into your socket. What I found significant and striking, you also find significant and striking. That's what I want to do. That's where you start to be able to define the difference between hack work and any art form. It has to do with getting other people to plug into your socket."
That's from the book Cronenberg on Cronenberg. I guess any Cronenberg fan should read it. It's a great book.
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I don't know about this one. Cronenberg's been on the hit and miss list with me for a long time. His early stuff was great("Shivers" i.e. "They Came From Within", "Scanners") Didn't like "Crash", except for that sexy blonde Spader was doing and there was something about about Rossana Arquette. I don't know, call me sick, but that was the only time I thought a crippled girl looked sexy! Hey, its a world.
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