In the Future, a Man Makes Art Out of His Pain

Léa Seydoux, Viggo Mortensen, and Kristen 
Stewart in "Crimes of the Future" 
Photo Credit: RottenTomatoes.com

Writer-director David Cronenberg has built a reputation on exploring sci-fi and body horror in his films, such as “The Fly,” “Videodrome,” and “Scanners.” However, his filmography includes more than that, as he’s also taken on other genres, like gangster films, historical films, and dramas.  Up until 1999, he moved around quite a bit between his mainstay and other genres.  That year marked the release of his most previous sci-fi/horror film, “Existenz.”  Since then, he hasn’t done a film within those genres, having released six films in varying genres, such as “A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises,” and “A Dangerous Method.”

Now, after 23 years, he makes his return to the body-horror genre with “Crimes of the Future,” which despite sharing a name with Cronenberg’s 1970 film, isn’t a remake of that film.  With an intriguing setup and a hypnotic strangeness, this is another great addition to the genre that has become synonymous with Cronenberg’s name.

Some time in the future, most of humanity has experienced biological changes, including the disappearance of physical pain and infectious diseases, while other humans go through alterations that are more drastic.  One of those people is Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), who’s afflicted with “accelerated evolution syndrome,” which has him growing new organs of unknown function.  As he and his partner, Caprice (Léa Seydoux), remove these organs as a method of performance art, they’ll also have to contend with Saul’s worsening condition.

Mortensen gives a pained performance as someone who’s always suffering under his illness.  Despite Saul’s affliction, Mortensen brings to life a character who has a passion for his art and love for his partner, trying to understand his condition and use his suffering to create something that Saul and Caprice find meaningful.  Even with the physical weakness that we see in Mortensen’s character, he shows Saul’s determination to keep himself going, working his way through a serious problem that continues to put his life at risk, all while finding a way to live through it all.

Seydoux shows restrained power as an individual who’s committed to her artistic ideals and keeping Saul as healthy as possible.  There’s a resoluteness that Seydoux elicits from her character as she works with Saul, always showing a confidence in handling his medical needs and knowing what’s best for him.  

Kristen Stewart provides entertainingly oddball work as an investigator for the National Organ Registry, an individual who begins to follow Saul and Caprice deeper and deeper into their work.  The social awkwardness that Stewart exhibits is a success in both fitting in with the overall strangeness of this future, while also working as a humorous reprieve from the body-horror sequences.

The screenplay by Cronenberg drags a little bit in the second act, but you can’t help but be won over by how imaginative he still manages to be when focusing on body horror.  The details that he’s able to conjure for whatever world he depicts shows him to be one of the most distinctive minds in modern film.  With the story’s mysterious and chilling opening scene, the introduction of the futuristic performance-art world, the fleshing-out of the enigmatic characters, and the doling out of details as to what’s going on in several aspects of the story, this is another screenplay that exhibits how Cronenberg is every bit as inventive in his scripts as he is in his visuals.  As usual, he doesn’t just try to impress us with his inventive grotesquely, but also shows that he has something meaningful to say.

After all of the films Cronenberg has done with body horror, you have to admire that he never felt the need to go overboard in order to keep us interested.  Sure, he’s had some grisliness in his films, but it’s not gratuitous and doesn’t take up the whole movie.  Because of this, Cronenberg shows that he can still keep his body-horror explorations going all of these years later without feeling the need to one-up himself.  He also handles the shift in focus well as he examines the film’s romantic edge between Saul and Caprice, offering a dark love story during the proceedings, similar to what he pulled off so well for “The Fly.”

For this film, Cronenberg utilizes a mix of practical and special effects.  The latter are fine, but it’s the practical effects that are always a big draw for Cronenberg’s sci-fi and horror films.  His latest film is another example of how his practical effects make the movie look more visceral, and the world within it looks more tangible.  With this being the first Cronenberg movie that I’ve seen in a theater, that tangibility is one of many aspects that made the experience memorable.

After being away from the sci-fi and horror genres for more than two decades, Cronenberg returns to what he does best, and “Crimes of the Future” shows that he’s still the best at what he does.  

Grade: A-