♥♥
+ Most Deserved Flop of the Year
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| Jude Law handles a strange weapon on this rust-colored poster for David Cronenberg's Existenz |
A prominent video game designer brings an inexperienced hunk with her into her virtual reality game universe, where they go through various strange things, - but what is real, and what is the game, - and is it even important to be able to differentiate?
Aficionados of the 1990s sensibilities and styles might rate this film by great Canadian writer-director David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises (2007)) higher, as it is a film that feels very much of its time: Jude Law (Road to Perdition (2002)), pretty and uncharacteristically oblivious here, at one point asks game designer Jennifer Jason Leigh (Dolores Claiborne (1995)), (and I am paraphrasing), if she would like to play eXistenZ benevolently with him, or something like that, (eXistenZ is the name of the game in the film.) And the film is full of lines and plot points that are postmodernist nonsense on full steam like that. The whole film feels a bit like a tiring update of Cronenberg's earlier, much better Videodrome (1983), which charted similar territory. (Existenz is also Cronenberg's first original screenplay since Videodrome.)
Besides this, the body-related aspects of the film, which are a natural part of most of the works of body-horror maestro Cronenberg, are mostly simply curious and gross in Existenz, SPOILER as when Law licks a wound on Leigh's back, or when she loses things in his hole, (which is not what you may think.)
None of the characters in the movie stir up any considerable interest, and the film is built up like a Chinese box, which on the surface can seem fascinating. But the problem is that we are never supposed to ask questions of the preceding box, - because the construction is ultimately hogwash.
Related reviews:
David Cronenberg: Cosmopolis (2012) - Cronenberg/DeLillo/Pattinson's speculative limo lullaby
A Dangerous Method (2011) - Cronenberg's rather disappointing waltz with the fathers of modern psychology
Eastern Promises (2007) - Cronenberg invites us to meet the Russian mob in London
A History of Violence (2005) or, Who Is Tom Stall?
Spider (2002) - Cronenberg takes us to the tormented (and slightly dull) mind of a schizophrenic
1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Dead Ringers (1988) or, Brothers and Their Instruments
The Dead Zone (1983) - Eerie sci-fi/horror King-adaptation
The Brood (1979) or, Marital Fury and Craze!
Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 2.8 mil. $ - North America only
= Box office disaster
[Existenz premiered 16 February (Berlin International Film Festival) and runs 97 minutes. Cronenberg was inspired to the plot after conducting an interview with novelist Salman Rushdie for Shift magazine in 1995, centered on the Iranian fatwa imposed upon the writer due to his controversial novel The Satanic Verses. Shooting took place from April - July in Ontario, Canada. Leigh lost a part in Eyes Wide Shut by starring in Existenz. The film opened #15 to an 810k $ first weekend in 256 theaters in North America, which was its peak. It was released around the same time as another sci-fi movie about an alternate reality and existential ambiguities, which wowed the public infinitely more: The Matrix grossed 463.5 mil. $ globally. Few numbers from other markets are known, but it seems fair to project the global gross of Existenz around 5 mil. $; according to Cronenberg biographer Bart Beaty, the film was "one of the biggest bombs of the Canadian film industry." Cronenberg was eventually forced to return to matter with more popular appeal in his great A History of Violence (2005). Existenz won the silver prize in Berlin. Existenz is fresh at 71 % with a 6.7 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
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