Director: David Cronenberg
Writer: David Cronenberg
Cinematography: Peter Suschitzky
Editor: Ronald Sanders
Music: Howard Shore
Notable Cast: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Willem Dafoe, Ian Holm, Don McKellar, Callum Keith Rennie, Christopher Eccleston, Sarah Polley, Robert A. Silverman, Oscar Hsu, Kris Lemche
David Cronenberg is not only one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of film, he is also one of the most unique cats to ever exist, a true iconoclast, style maker, and soothsayer. His films not only reflect the time they are made in, they also foresee the future in a way few others have accomplished. My aversion to horror films is well known at this point, so while I appreciate Cronenberg’s 70’s output, I’m not feeling it. His writing has always been on point, but the actors and milieu are decidedly amateurish, very Canadian (and not in the good Degrassi Junior High way…).
Cronenberg really doesn’t hit his body horror groove until the 80’s, and to me, it starts with The Fly. Truly one of the best films of its decade. I can’t really get with Scanners or The Dead Zone. I like Videodrome, but I don’t love Videodrome. The Fly is where it’s at. Pure, raw emotion, deep romance, and an insane sci-fi premise with expert execution. It’s just phenomenal. After Dead Ringers (one of the real sorrows of my cinematic life is knowing the original title of Twins was disallowed due to the shitty Schwarzenegger flick coming out mere months before. Twins is SUCH a better title for Dead Ringers. But oddly enough that piece of shit Oscar bait Crash WAS allowed to use the same title as Cronenberg’s masterpiece. I remember when I met Elias Koteas back in 2006 and told him how much I loved “the real Crash,) He loved that and repeated it back to me approvingly), Cronenberg kinda went into the wilderness for a few years in the early 90’s, before coming roaring back with Crash, which is one of my top ten films of all time. An audacious masterpiece if ever there was one. Only Cronenberg could have made that film. Only him. That’s for a future post, though.
Today, we’re here to talk about his follow up to Crash, the sci-fi tinged, mind-bending game within a game, eXistenZ (“One word. Small e, capital X, capital Z.”) Released the same year as the somewhat similarly themed, though obviously wildly different film, The Matrix, eXistenZ was Matrix for the snob set, for the stuffy arthouse crowd that eschews mainstream action films (no matter how smart, and the first Matrix is a very smart movie). eXistenZ fits very neatly within Cronenberg’s signature themes (technology, flesh, corporations, disease), and exhibits the man at the absolute top of his form.
Unfortunately, much like Ollie Stone and Natural Born Killers, eXistenZ is the last time I ever sat in a theater and loved a David Cronenberg film. He did make the absolutely fantastic short film, Camera, in 2000 for the Toronto Film Festival, but his feature work just didn’t live up to the man’s output in the 80’s and 90’s. This reached its apotheosis (nadir?) with Map to the Stars, one of the worst films I have ever sat through in a cinema (and I’ve sat through a lot, including a very early, rough cut (zero efx) of Will Ferrell’s putrid, execrable Land of the Lost on the Universal lot with hack director, Brad Silberling, sitting right in front of me. It’s a long story, but ends with me giving them the idea for how to rewrite their ending. Fuckers). Crimes of the Future was decent, a bit of a return to form, but still lacking that certain something.
Let’s go back to the 20th century for our last taste of Cronenbergian goodness. He was using a new actor named Jude Law that everyone was going gaga over, and the ever reliable Jennifer Jason Leigh. And wait a minute, Willem Dafoe is in this too? How could it miss?
I wonder, how are the 1ST 5 Minutes?
1ST 5 MINUTES
I love Howard Shore. Unabashedly. In addition to his scores for nearly all of Cronenberg’s films, he’s also responsible for the sonic landscapes of countless great films like Big, The Silence of the Lambs, Prelude to a Kiss, Philadelphia, Ed Wood, The Cell, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. A true genius, in every sense of the word. His score for Cronenberg’s Crash was phenomenal. Sorry to say, his score for eXistenZ was… not. It’s perfectly serviceable and even effective in spots, but a classic it is not.
My rule for a classic score is always… is it hummable as you leave the theater? Does the theme get stuck in your head? If so, great fucking score. If not? Nope. I’ll maintain until the day I die, and even thereafter, that music is integral to a film’s success. But as long as the music is not bad, a film can overcome its mediocrity. An average film score will not ruin a good movie. It won’t elevate it either. But at least it doesn’t detract. A bad film score, on the other hand, can totally sink your picture, no matter how good. I’ve been known to take movies off if the music is terrible right up front. It’s like, you fucked up the intro to your film. The first thing people experience with your film is this terrible music. Why do you deserve more of my time? You don’t. A bad score or shitty songs are indicative of a shitty movie. I dare you to name one great film that has a shitty score or shitty songs. Simply does not exist.
eXistenZ is old school in the sense that it has a proper opening credits sequence. It tells no story, it’s simply abstract artwork, text credits, and Shore’s unmemorable music. This shit goes on for 3 and a half minutes! It’s frankly uninspired, and while there’s nothing here that would make me reach for the remote, there’s nothing tethering me to the movie at this point. It’s Cronenberg, so of course I will hang in there, but if it was anyone else, they’re already on very thin ice starting the film like this, and I would be very close to bailing if shit didn’t improve, and quickly.
Thankfully, things pick up right after the credits as we get the great Chris Eccleston (best of the new Dr. Who lot, don’t even argue, you’ll embarrass yourself) at a chalkboard writing “eXistenZ” in that weird way and explaining how it’s a new game from Antenna Research. His accent is fantastic here. No idea what it is supposed to be, but I love it. Eccleston is a fantastic actor, super underrated, and doesn’t get enough work. Even in this movie, after this opening, he’s got nothing until the very last scene (which his character laments, in one of the many meta commentaries delivered throughout the film. And I relish each and every meta commentary in this movie, it’s one of its best qualities).
But he does a good job setting some things up, and introducing us to Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Allegra Geller, who we are told is one of the world’s best and most famous game designers. Yet they’re assembled in some old church and using chalkboards? Something is amiss right from the start, you’re just not sure what. Allegra’s hairstyle is also off, with half her hair straight and the other half crimped, complete with crooked part.
She appears sheepish when introduced, but the crowd adores her, with one fan even standing up and screaming her name, in a funny bit. This movie, for not being a comedy, is very funny. One of Cronenberg’s least discussed talents is his gift for understated, even droll, humor in his films. And this movie is full of them.
And as she takes the stage, that does it for the 1ST 5 Minutes of eXistenZ. If I did not know it was Cronenberg, I’m not sure I’d stick around just based on these 5 minutes. The score is unremarkable, the credits are boring (and after having seen this film many, many times, I still don’t get what the images are supposed to be, or what message or theme we as the audience are being subliminally suggested), and while I love Chris Eccleston and Jennifer Jason Leigh, nothing here is really exemplary… yet.
But you know what we did see in these 1ST 5 Minutes? David motherfucking Cronenberg is the writer/director. And not based on some novel or some shit, this script is straight from the body horror master’s cranium itself. That fact ALONE overwhelms any other considerations. Yes, folks, this is the first time on this Substack that we are grading a 1ST 5 Minutes on one name being in the opening credits. And based on that name, this is easily one of the best 1ST 5 Minutes we’ve had so far!
The rest of the flick
I know you’re already aware that these are not reviews but analyses, but SPOILERS ahead if you have not seen the film. This should go without saying for this Substack, but I am reminding you just in case because the movie’s twists are extremely important to the effectiveness of the film itself.
Once you’ve seen the film, you’re aware that this entire opening sequence takes place inside the game transCendenZ (by Pilgrimage). It’s brilliant the way Cronenberg plays with the tropes of cinema throughout this film. Because we start the film already in the game, the audience just accepts it as the base reality of the film itself. Sure there are weird organic guns that shoot teeth, bizarre game pods that seem alive which we jack in to with things that look like umbilical cords, and two headed mutant amphibians, but this is a movie, so we accept the sci-fi world it takes place in as the actual reality for the characters on screen. It’s quite ingenious, and as they go deeper, first with eXistenz, and then the “micro pods” they insert while inside eXistenZ, there are multiple layers of virtual reality our characters inhabit, to the point that base reality is for all intents and purposes unknown. Genius.
It is best summed up by the character at the end, who played the Chinese Waiter (Oscar Hsu, in a great turn) inside the micro pod game, which itself was inside eXistenz, which itself was inside transCendenZ. After Allegra Gellar and Ted Pikul (Jude Law) have revealed themselves as Realists (a political movement in the film, characterized by terrorism, that seeks to destroy anyone they think subverts and “deforms” reality, like these virtual reality game designers), and killed the creator of transCendenz, Yevgeny Nourish (the brilliant Don McKellar, an accomplished filmmaker in his own right), and the Pilgrimage exec, Merle (Sarah Polley), they’re about to kill the guy who played the Chinese Waiter.
He initially pleads for his life, before uttering the last line in the film, and my Favorite Line in the whole movie, “Hey, tell me the truth… are we still in the game?” Fuck. I get chills just typing that out. And the cut back to Allegra and Ted standing there, pointing their guns, with no answer for him… genius. Brings a tear to my eye every time. And it’s my Favorite Shot in the whole film. Hard for me to think of another film where my Favorite Line AND my Favorite Shot all happen in the last 30 seconds. And you know what, this whole end scene in the church might be my Favorite Scene in the whole movie, if not for the scene in the Chinese Restaurant building the tooth shooting bone and guts gun.
Simulation theory is all the rage now, but back in 1999, not so much, which is why it was so significant that both this film and The Matrix were released that same year within months of each other. Is Hollywood warning us? Or are they conditioning us for the truth yet to be revealed? In both films, they posit that, in the future, humans will be the battery that runs the technology. In both films, the very nature of reality is questioned. Simulation theory posits that any sufficiently advanced society will create games that are indistinguishable from reality. And if that is the case, what are the odds we are currently in base reality, as opposed to characters in some cosmic game?
The way both films play with this theme are very interesting. eXistenZ is by far the stranger film, and as such, is probably the better film, especially on rewatch, which is why I started with the end, first. When I sat in the theater to watch eXistenZ, I was fairly entertained but not bowled over, it was only once the end was revealed, that we were in the game from the start of the film, and may still be in a game, that the movie went from the fairly good to the nearly great. Most films that have such a mindbending end twist wreck the film for repeated viewings. Once the twist is known, it kind of deflates the central mystery at the heart of the film. But with eXistenZ, once you know the ending, watching the movie again takes on a whole new dimension that is much more rewarding a viewing experience than the initial watch.
For this review, I watched the film with my wife, who is a good stand in for the average film goer. Her tastes are varied, but go too far in one direction or another and she checks out. She was not a fan of this movie, even once the twist was revealed. I was surprised at that. She also did not appreciate the meta commentary provided by the characters, even though their comments were perfectly lining up with her criticism of the film (Ian Holm’s indecipherable accent, too many twists and turns at the end, not knowing exactly what the characters are supposed to be doing in the game, etc.). It probably explains why this film was not a box office success. It’s just a little too weird for the normie crowd. But me? I fucking love it.
Right away, we get the kid coming into the meeting and he’s carrying some very odd looking “game system.” But not nearly as odd as the game systems the people gathered on stage with Allegra are using. Especially once she “turns it on” (sexual innuendo permeates this film, not least of which are the “bio-ports” they have at the base of their spine, which at one point Allegra fingers Ted’s and he tongues hers) and it makes some odd animal like sounds and actually seems to have its own organic movement, like it is alive. The sound design throughout the entire film is fantastic, familiar yet otherworldly, grotesque without being unreal. Tom Bjelic really outdoes himself here with the soundscape he cobbled together.
I love “what the fuck” moments in films, and here we get two right away. First, the incredibly unique and kind of creepy gaming systems with umbilical cords you plug into your back, and then a gun made out of bone and gristle that fires human teeth as bullets! How amazing is that? What an incredible idea. Perfectly executed.
Once Allegra and Ted are on the run from apparent assassins in the Realist community (“Death to the demoness Allegra Gellar!”), they need to fix Ted up with a bio-port, and stop at a country gas station named, appropriately enough, Country Gas Station. First time watching this, since you accept the cinematic world, you figure okay, in this world they have generic names for things. But when you watch it again, of course it has that name as it is a video game and not the real world.
Same goes for the scene when Allegra is outside the gas station while Ted gets his bio-port from Willem Dafoe’s Gas, she’s feeling the walls of the gas station, kicking dirt, interacting with a two headed mutant lizard, all with a wondrous, kind of shit eating grin on her face. First time through, this scene doesn’t really hit and you think maybe she’s just excited to be alive after the attempt on her life. But once you know they’re in the game from the start, and that her character is in fact a Realist who never played one of these games before, the scene takes off in a different direction. It’s really nicely done.
The film really starts to hit its speed and get going once Allegra and Ted enter eXistenz itself, which in reality means they’re at least 2 levels deep as they’re plugging into a game within the game they’re already plugged in to. The colors pop more once they’re in eXistenZ, and things take on more bizarre turns, with characters repeating dialogue until given the right prompts to keep going, and our main characters go a level deeper, as they jack into “micro pods” once in eXistenZ, sending them 3 layers deep.
Ted is suddenly at a trout farm, that seems to grow/manufacture the mutated and DNA modified amphibians. He is tasked with cutting open these odd looking creatures and wrapping up certain organs in brown paper and putting random seeming initials on the bags. Despite never having done this before, Ted “seems to know what he’s doing,” according to Yevgeny Nourish, the guy at the next animal carving station. Turns out Yevgeny is a game character who gives Ted his next instructions, to rendezvous at a Chinese restaurant for lunch. Ted finds Allegra, but she seems to be a game character at this point, as she repeats action and dialogue while waiting for the correct prompt. Are Allegra and Ted losing touch with reality? Or are they even real? First time through you think perhaps a form of psychosis is setting in. But on repeat viewing one is left to wonder if they are even real humans at any point in the reality sandwich. Hard to say.
This leads to my Favorite Scene, at the Chinese restaurant, where after ordering the special (“aren’t you dying to know what’s so special about the special?!”), Ted uncontrollably begins to eat the disgusting animal parts in front of him, in all their gooey glory, and slowly assemble the same organic tooth shooting gun from earlier in the film, much to his and Allegra’s surprise. First time, reality is bleeding through. Second time, of course there’s a tooth gun, they’re in a game inside a game inside a game. He instinctually points the gun at Allegra, before deciding he's actually there to kill the Chinese Waiter. It’s an incredibly unsettling scene, watching Jude Law suck on and nibble all this fishy shit that looks like it is covered in snots and diarrhea makes you almost want to vomit.
At this point my wife wanted the movie off. I insisted we keep watching, thinking the payoff would be enough for her. Not more than a few minutes after she complained how she didn’t really understand anything or what anyone was doing or why, Ted has that great exchange where he says, “We’re both stumbling around together in this unformed world, whose rules and objectives are largely unknown, seemingly indecipherable or even possibly nonexistent, always on the verge of being killed by forces that we don’t understand.” I turned to her and she was not impressed. I noted how Ted had meta commentary about the film itself. Still, not impressed. Oh well...
The whole film is really great fun. Interesting, wild, unpredictable, intriguing. All leading to that amazing climax. I LOVE LOVE LOVE when Allegra kills Ted and then screams out, “Have I won? Have I won the game?” and then turns around with that blue thing on her head, only to then see she’s looking at church pews in the middle of this field. It’s a really well done “what the fuck” moment, at a perfect time in the film.
When they all “wake up” in the old church (we also started in an old church at the beginning, maybe alerting us they’re still in the game. Afterall, Pilgrimage is this huge gaming company testing out their brand new game, and they do it in some rinky old church with barely any tech visible? I say they’re still in the game, note how no one in the church reacts to them murdering Yevgeny and Merle, just like no one reacted in the game whenever someone was shot), and we see all the characters from throughout the film, but as their “real” selves, it’s great. And then when they start commenting on their characters, echoing what we in the audience perhaps feel as well, utter genius. Such good writing here from Cronenberg. Capped off by the truly phenomenal ending. It’s not easy to do this kind of shit and have it work. And work so well. Cronenberg makes it look effortless. A stunning achievement.
“Death to the demon, Yevgeny Nourish!”
“Death to Pilgrimage! Death to transCendenZ!”
So fucking strange and satisfying. A near perfect Cronenberg film that nicely summarizes and underlines the themes he has explored his entire career, namely disease, technology, flesh, shadowy corporations. And as said at the outset, the ending makes me emotional every time I see it. I feel this ending in my fucking tear ducts.
But the 1ST 5 Minutes don’t necessarily do this film justice from a purely objective standpoint. Subjectively, you know it is a Cronenberg flick, so of course it will be worth your time, but in a vacuum, this is one of the rare great films that doesn’t really evince that greatness in the 1ST 5.
You can’t win them all…
The One Sheet
The North American one sheets for this film are pretty terrible. Also nearly impossible to figure out what the official one sheet even was. You get varied results online and my own memory fails me, which is always a sign the posters stunk, otherwise I’d remember them.
This first poster, with the back of a silhouetted figure, with a light coming from what we viewers of the film know as her bio-port, with a series of ones and zeroes in the background, is awful. What even is this? Lawnmower Man Part 3? And that tagline. God. Looks like straight to video crapola. Keep in mind, someone or multiple someones GOT PAID to create this poster, and then it GOT APPROVED! Truly amazing.
This next poster at least features our two leads, and gives the slightest of hints of what’s in store for you as the viewer. It features the previous poster as a base, and then just photoshops in JJL and J. Law. But she is holding the tooth gun and he is tonguing the back hole, so you at least know it’s not the usual shit. Still pretty bad, though. And another shit tagline!
This next poster is odd. Not sure if it was a real poster on release or made specifically for the DVD release, but I don’t remember ever seeing this before the DVD. Who knows. This poster also kinda stinks. Yeah, he’s holding the tooth gun, but the abstract background image does nothing. Top right looks like a plate of spaghetti. Also has the same shit tagline as previous poster. Fail.
Now THIS is what I’m fucking talking about! The Japanese poster is phenomenal. Great image of our two leads connected to the pods, passed out on that red bed, surrounded by an abstract collage of fingers and game pods. Striking graphic design, great use of red and white font, and just slick as fuck. It’s so good I may try to track one down for my wall. It’s THAT good!
This last poster is great, despite the shit tagline, cause the image is so good. I just don’t know if it is an official one sheet or fan made. But it struck me when I came across it and figured why not throw it in with the rest? But as a rule I try to not include fan made posters.
And that does it for eXistenZ and the legend, David Cronenberg. The movie is classic Cronenberg plugged straight into your neo cortex like some glorified bio-port.
If this reality IS all a simulation, I hope the programmer is David Cronenberg.
See you in two…