Crimes of the Future

A fascinatingly twisted world that I enjoyed watching, although the plot is far from "entertaining". It's a shame, because even in the world the story takes place, and in the themes it addresses, I can see the potential for a heightened viewer experience. Unfortunately, Cronenberg didn’t handle them in an attractive way. Stylish nastiness with potential drowned in boring dialogue. Overall, it could have been worse, but also much better. (21/06/2022)

David Cronenberg is the star of body horror of the last century, and he certainly deserves credit for his past films, but he's almost 80 now, and it's hard to tell if it's filmmaker burnout, senile dementia, or just a compulsive desire to put out tasteless dreck, but this is a huge bummer. I was expecting an original sci-fi world where organs would be cut by the hundreds, with a charismatic Viggo Mortensen and an overall point with a philosophical overlay, and instead I got the exact opposite of all of the above. The world is dysfunctional, Viggo is mediocre to bland, and the idea is simply disastrous, or rather, it’s not bad in itself, but the execution is. There's hardly any gore, which is already a complete stretch in this subgenre, and when it's present, it's shitty. Zero believability, cheap B-movie visuals, and a disregard for and mockery of human anatomy. Hard to describe disappointment. (30/06/2022)

For the fact that it's actually quite "Cronenbergian", except for the beautiful soundtrack and a very respectable Léa Seydoux, this late Cronenberg actually fails to impress with anything. Kristen Stewart is almost a parody and Viggo Mortensen gives a completely routine and uninteresting performance. The premise is very good, but as a whole it fails miserably. [50%] [KVIFF 2022] (01/07/2022)

Crimes of the Future is a bizarre, visually polished movie with an interesting dystopian vision of society compelling music from Howard Shore, a charismatic Mortensen in a black martyr’s cowl and a sexually and irresistibly unique Kristen Stewart. Every second with her was entrancing for me. It’s just a shame that the film didn’t culminate in her delightful, loud orgasm on the operating table while surgically connecting her open wounds with the tumor-ridden Mortensen. When I was a young boy, the message of Hellraiser that “pain is pleasure” was instrumental in helping me overcome getting stitches for my busted head and other injuries from doing what boys do. Crimes of the Future gave me the idea that having something unwelcome and malignant growing in your body is not only a natural genetic process of life, but also a unique work of art created by our bodies. This is a strange, fascinating film that is difficult to understand, and I will definitely watch it again. [KVIFF] (06/07/2022)

If someone asked me to sum up Cronenberg's latest film in one sentence, it would probably be unattainable mission. On the one hand, it’s mysterious, unyielding and strongly allegorical, as it’s not psychologically interested in the characters, leaving them to wander around the austerely rendered dystopian setting and utter a series of existential or technical rather than mundane and plot-forming lines, but it’s also straightforward and dense. The introduction already uses simple means of communication to ask the questions we desperately want answers to. We are immersed in another distinctive Cronenberg world, where people hardly feel pain; it has become more of an aphrodisiac. Nobody is interested in "old sex" anymore, and instead people get aroused in public by cutting each other. Some transfer this ecstasy into art, which in Crimes of the Future defies all self-control. The show here is driven to extremes that may yet captivate an increasingly disfigured and mutated society. The boundary between artist and creation is disappearing, just as the role of the environment is changing, from a benevolent guiding force to a definitively beleaguered human instrument and, in a way, a feeding. Unfortunately, Cronenberg renders all these absorbing and big ideas too austerely and mainly descriptively, so it stands out painfully at times that the famous filmmaker triumphs mainly in the brooding arrangement of his original world, in which the "alien" coldness clashes with the organic warmth of the sprawling stump beds and chairs. It's time to listen, says the presenter during the performance of an individual studded with auditory organs, exhorting especially the audience, who must be able, as is traditional with Cronenberg, to interpret things in their own way. A film in which the protagonist participates in an inner beauty contest while growing a set of mutant organs may sound like cheap symbolism, but in the hands of a skilled filmmaker it offers many thought-provoking ideas. Often too descriptive and visually unattractive, but still poignant and worthy of reflection. 70 % (02/07/2022)