Interesting ideas and interesting performances, but not all of it ends up working. First, one superficial complaint: the movie feels a bit cheap at times. Lots of simple sets, lots of tight shots, and lots of Viggo Mortensen just crouching on the ground. As another example, the organic based beds and chairs don't feel quite as real (or disgusting) as what I've come to expect out of Cronenberg's practical prop design. According to Wikipedia, the film was originally set for production back in 2003 with a budget of $35 million. While I'm no expert, I suspect that two decades later the actual budget didn't hit that number.
Story wise, the film hits highs and lows in terms of its reliance on exposition. The opening sequence was fantastic, throwing the audience into an unfamiliar world and letting us decipher things on our own. However, pretty quickly we start to get some heavy handed exposition dumps and audience directed metaphor explanations (e.g. the first scene with Wippet, or Timlin's discussion of the "performance art"). Additionally, the story feels a bit disjointed, with not all threads coming together in cohesive ways or getting satisfying resolutions. In fact, one thread felt like it had no resolution whatsoever, perhaps being left on the cutting room floor (the "inner beauty" pageant that Wippet was running that Viggo's character registers for... did I miss something or did that just not come up again?). Ultimately, I wanted more out of the film's big ideas. It felt like a superficial exploration, presenting a simple binary without enough nuance to keep me thinking.
For a philosophical and political cyberpunk film, it has some of the most inspired ideas and themes since eXistenZ and The Matrix, but it is structured and directed like a low-budget indie film and that really hurt its accessibility (and it's a pity because the message is really important). It felt like each character was a composite of 2-3 different characters' worth of ideas that didn't quite gel together. Maybe the script needed some trimming and polish, or maybe it would've worked better as a book than a film.
As food for thought, it was spectacular. As entertainment, not so much.
OMG, I genuinely thought for the whole movie that Lang was played by The Boys' Antony Starr lol Starr and Scott Speedman could be twins!
So many bad reviews. Ouch.
It has been awhile since I've watched a Cronenberg movie, but upon seeing this I was instantly teleported to earlier works: Naked Lunch, Dead Ringers, Crash, eXistenZ. I thought "ahh yes, I remember this guy." It is Cronenberg after all, so one should expect body horror and metaphor.
I very much loved the cult of celebrity and the usual Cronenberg gizmos and gadgets. I felt Kristen Stewart was a good choice for Timlin and it was nice to see a little more range from her. This is great movie if you like to squirm and get a little meta about the message. This really was about making art, opening up oneself for the audience, poking around inside and growing new ideas and works. I also really loved the kid who ate plastic along with the many boat references. Great commentary on all microplastics we are now finding in living organisms especially those harvested from the sea. We really are screwing up this planet. I wonder if Cronenberg knew this latest work might be a little hard for a general audience to swallow? A little box office poison perhaps. Somehow I believe he did... hahaha.
What a huge let down. This is an insufferably boring, lifeless and insultingly pretentious dystopian horror. I love how they market this as something truly shocking that would inspire walk outs out when it's not. I recently watched Alex Garland's pretentious sci-fi miniseries and this film gives the exact same energy if we remove all the body horror elements. Nothing about this film is particularly compelling. The lack of tension makes it feel drab and lifeless rather than thrilling. Don’t get me wrong, it looks great, the score is bomb, it has that Cronenberg weirdness all over it, and it seems like there are some interesting themes of human evolution and adapting to an ever-changing environment, but it's all packaged in a way to make it as mediocre as possible. Not to mention the rather uninteresting supporting roles (largely filler), which makes the runtime periodically feels too long. There are some good wince-inducing body horror moments, at least.
This may be Cronenberg's most sci-fi movie yet.
The fact is, I love David's movies; he can honestly do no wrong. That being said, I was never fully clear on what was going on here.
I mean, I got the overall premise, but as for the why, I can't tell you. Essentially, Earth has become so toxic, humans have evolved beyond pain, and in some cases, standard food. There's a lot more going on here, and I was just unclear on how all the pieces fit. All of this is fairly irrelevant, because I am used to Cronenberg's movies: I know they are going to be weird, like really weird, but they all make sense, even if it's not immediately apparent. The same cannot be said for other artistic directors.
The long and short of this is: If you are already a fan of Cronenberg's other movies, just watch this, it's really good. Reminded me a bit of eXistenZ. If you are not already a fan, do not start here... watch The Fly, work from there.
Crimes of the Future (2022)
Like when you drop your phone under the bed and you reach down blindly trying to find it and you know it's right there but it's just beyond your grasp: Cronenberg had the right idea but just couldn't quite get there.
Crimes is not by any means a bad movie. It's got that mix of Lynch and Argento we've come to know and love, along with the kitsch practical effects Cronenberg is so enamored with, yet here he doesn't push any of these envelopes far enough.
I heard people walked out of the screening at Cannes and, honestly, I don't see why. Sure, there was some body horror but what was here was tame compared to Raw, for example, where people actually did leave my screening (no one left the theater at my showing of Crimes, and it was packed).
Cronenberg once again tries to tightrope the line between message and gore, but the message was muddled and the gore was no more shocking than most horror. (If you want to see genuinely creepy body horror, try the French flick Dans ma peau / In My Skin (2002).)
Also holding back COTF is the obvious fact that it treads on the same beaten path Crash already braved. It's as though he took that idea, hollowed it out and polished it up.
What we have left, after the disappointing anticlimax, is a film that's fun to watch thanks to the extremes it brushes up against, but that looks a little dated beside the work of those directors (I'm thinking specifically of Eggers and Aster) that Cronenberg's earlier films inspired.
Yessss I made it to the end
might as well start watching surgeries now
In the near future, he grows tumor-organs in himself, she publicly cuts them out. This performance is considered art, and the law does not approve, but turns a blind eye. After all, the hero is an undercover agent who turns over to the police those who have gone far in changing themselves. But having accidentally discovered a whole community of such NON-humans, he suddenly covers his tracks. Like the director, he wants to know what’s next?
Not the most enjoyable of watches, it meanders a bit, though 'Crimes of the Future' is most certainly interesting throughout.
I tend to find films like this a little hit-and-miss, as I personally find the constant reaching for shock value or just simple weirdness a bit too forced. And this film does that a few times, but to be fair as the run time was ticking by I could definitely feel myself becoming more and more intrigued by events portrayed on screen.
Cast-wise, Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux great together, very good acting and very good chemistry. Don McKellar (just me who sees a Jeffrey DeMunn likeness in his eyes? probably ...) and Welket Bungué are more than decent too. Kristen Stewart and Scott Speedman give solid showings as well.
A, fair to say, weird one it is, but a weird one that I just about got enough from.
I was genuinely bored with this movie. I thought something would pick up or change in certain parts, but there just wasn’t here for me
Future people eating plastic as a societal critique is one thing but the whole thing is just a big mess of quasi philosophical nonsense completely lost by the chock value of the plentiful shots of self mutilation.
None of the leads delivers a performance at their usual level but Kristen Stewarts is absolutely farcical.
It's like she's playing Anna Kendrick parodying Kristen Stewart.
And apparently $27 million gets you props that barely would have been up to par in the 80s.
The whole thing is just spectacularly bad.
Some interesting ideas and moments, but kinda boring and empty overall. I'm probably being overly generous by giving this a 6/10.
It might be low expectations due to the mixed response it’s received, but I loved Crimes of the Future. It gave me the mid-tier ‘90s Cronenberg vibe (think Naked Lunch & eXistenZ) that I didn’t know I was craving. His droll humour is in full effect - god how I’ve missed his original scripts and this was only the second he’s had produced since Videodrome. I particularly enjoyed Viggo Mortensen & Kirsten Stewart’s performances but most of the actors were fun - Don McKellar turns in one of his standard oddball turns. Lots of fun nods to earlier Cronenberg movies too. Recommended if you’re nostalgic for that specific kind of body horror surrealist humour.
There is a return to obsessions with the human body in this film noir that takes place in a painless society, where the new sex consists of the penetration of a scalpel. David Cronenberg builds art from the viscera, finds within the rebellion of nature against technology. There are moments of extraordinary visionary gaze, but also an obvious lack of budget. Wrapped in a fascinating soundtrack, the film walks steadily.
I like the idea of people evolving and eating plastic. That would solve a lot of problems. But the rest of the movie? Just nonsense.
I also hated existenz so...
Like most Cronenberg films, it must be seen more than once to fully appreciate. Not for casuals.
Watched for around 20 minutes and got so bored I turned it off. I cant remember the last movie I didn't finish so this was BAD....
First off, the title is misleading. It is no thriller.
The ideas and the premise are very original with lots of potential. It is thought-provoking, to a certain extent believable and an interesting topic that was chosen.
The acting was great in my opinion, maybe the best part of the movie along with the atmosphere and the visuals.
The big downside for me in this movie and what makes it hard to watch are simply that there are too many rules that the viewer has simply to accept. The non-existence of pain, the theories behind organ growth, sex...it is too hard to follow, to accept this kind of reality, and most importantly to relate.
I dont know what its like to feel no pain if I would've never felt pain at all - or what it is like to feel pleasure when someone does surgery on me.
I always appreciate movies about outlaws, feeling alienated or the classic discussion how far Art can go - but the deeper topics are so muddled in concepts that you have to constantly dig while watching the movie and being even introduced to more concepts or provocation. You can cut so many scenes and the movie still would have worked - and this is not meant as a compliment.
All in all, it was an interesting movie but not my kind. Not because it was gross.
The only mystery here is that so few could miss the obvious point of Cronenberg's "Crimes of the Future".
Maybe not his best film, but really very very good.
Painfully slow, and at the end couldn't stop thinking only but WTF. So many questions left. From this director i only have seen ExistenZ and it was a long time ago. I remember it was weird as hell, but don't quite remember if these are common traits of him.
This movie is for people who eat pizza with a fork and knife.
The movie has a very serious problem that is tied to the nature of the genre, its immortality: it's full of dialogues that explain, explain, and explain... it feels more like an essay than a film. Horror, on the other hand, never dies because it's a boundless machine: it doesn't need to explain. Other genres, from westerns to musicals to war films, have to justify their narratives and "close" them credibly. Horror doesn't. It has no limits and no obligations. Cronenberg deserves credit for resetting monsters, zombies, and vampires and bringing horror inside us, into our bodies. But in cinema, it would be better to make a spectacle of it, not philosophy.
This was...bad? I'm not totally sure. I am pretty sure it wasn't good. Weird? For sure. The combination of a world that felt so small with concepts that felt so big was jarring. On top of that, the imagery was at times amazing, but at other points wholly drab. And at the end of it all...I think there were some sort of themes about breaking taboos and the cult of celebrity and (maybe) the manifestation of creativity? I dunno. It was all sorts of odd and didn't quite come together for me.
Crimes of the Future is a little too out there for me. There are cinematic elements that deserve praise and the premise seems interesting enough but Cronenberg ends up exploring the wrong ideas. Tonguing someone's insides and becoming turned on by grotesque surgeries just doesn't resonate.
Message overcome by medium, yet painted with elan and commitment. Felt too divorced from a created world to sustain repeated viewing or give a deep sense of awe.
A vintage science fiction movie.
Bizarre and intriguing, it's stimulating to see these kinds of retro movies every once in awhile. Not like anything else you've seen since Naked Lunch.
Despite my fascination for toxic atmospheres with repulsive motifs, Cronenberg’s movies tend to be rather hit and miss. Nothing against his anticlimactic endings – it’s mostly how he tries to make up for the lack of budget with verbose and stilted dialogues that are supposed to make his movies conceptual. Intriguing premises that could have been much more. “Crimes of the Future” marks the director’s return to body horror after the poor reception of his most recent experiments, and it felt particularly close to “Crash” for the wrong reasons. Again, we have the cast walking in circles as they explain the movie directly to the audience in between each set piece. It intrigues for the first few minutes, but it ultimately leaves the impression of a bland and toothless work that doesn’t add anything to what we’ve already seen over three decades ago.
Some interests concepts here, but ultimately a tedious bore.
Cronenburg returns to body horror with this film but he really shouldn't have bothered. It's too reminiscent of Existenz and Crash and as such, offers little that is new.
...What did I just watch?
Crazy arthouse movie by David. Reflects on today's problems. Really thoughtful, many layers.
According to the critics, it should have been the film of the week. Hard however to understand anything and why the director insisted on such unclear plot development, even if the message was more or less outlined. I even thought I went to the wrong screen and was seeing Bodies Bodies Bodies, sign that the title might be out of place.
:heart:x5
First of all - if you are planning on watching this expecting to see a Kristen Stewart movie, you will be very disappointed. She is barely in this movie.
I haven't watched a Cronenberg movie since Existenz (1999). I'm going to have to go find some of his other works from the last 20 years.
This is definitely a throwback, or homage even to his earlier work. So if you like the Cronenburg genre, you will most likely enjoy this. For me however, it felt thin and tired. Not his best.
How I rate:
1-3 :heart: = seriously! don't waste your time
4-6 :heart: = you may or may not enjoy this
7-8 :heart: = I expect you will like this too
9-10 :heart: = movies and TV shows I really love!
I fail to see why anyone would walk out on this movie unless they found it as incredibly boring as I did.
I am assuming the walkouts were all part of the hype and as poorly put together as the set dressing of many scenes within this film.
For me this was one movie too far for David Cronenberg, it was just utterly terrible throughout, maybe I expected more, maybe I was taken in by the hype but whatever it was that I expected I was left completely bereft and can only offer 1 star for this.
More like Sex of the Future. It's gross, perverted, disturbing and not a single likable character. Probably the weirdest movie i've watched in my life.
Slow and really not that interesting. I tapped out after an hour and ten minutes
Review by Patrick KellyVIP 8BlockedParent2022-06-05T04:23:04Z
A lot of art house films run the stereotype of not really holding as much depth as people project onto them, and this is no different. Maybe there's more here, but it's a lot of conjecture. You're going to read into it what you want to, but in the end, you're the one putting in the effort.
The truly great works in this genre give you more to hold onto and something substantive to take leaps from. This just feels like a lot of vague middling. Never too bold. Never too outrageous. But never really cutting either.
There is some obvious commentary on the art world and the cult of celebrity. The ability to get lost in the pursuit of great things and to be misunderstood. But it's nothing as fresh as the material begs to express. It's superficial and there certainly isn't the payoff I was looking for. A lot of loose threads that distract, and a lot of wasted time meandering through pointless juxtapositioning.
That said, there is something here. It's not a wasted effort, and it could even be that the commentary is to an extent on you having to put in the effort to get something out of the piece. But any artwork that has its head up it's ass so much that it compromises itself to make a statement doesn't deserve praise for delivering an underwhelming result..