Crimes of the Future (2022) Dir. David Cronenberg

What would you expect from a provocateur like Cronenberg? A young boy eating a bin? That’s right, a bin. Not out of a bin but eating THE bin – a literal plastic bin. And so that’s where we open the latest film from the body-horror director as he returns to the dark themes and issues he’s consistently explored throughout his career.

In Crimes of the Future, the aforementioned boy is smothered by his mother and we are introduced to a world where not only can some people consume plastics, there is a whole society where pain has been eradicated and body modification is not only normal but part of a blooming art scene.

Viggo Mortenssen plays Saul Tenser, a performance artist who cannot digest normal food and whose body also deals with vestigial body parts (organs that have seemingly lost their original function). Without pain, his “art” involves him having these (revoltingly) removed in front of a willing crowd.

With human evolution accelerating, the film delves deep into art and the body and we are told that “surgery is the new sex”. Digging deep into topics such as these, the film is very much an overt reflection of Cronenberg’s career itself. As once again, he uses technology and flesh for our entertainment - one which these characters themselves embody in the narrative whilst a number of plots points also seem eerily familiar from his other movies such as the melding of biotech, genetics and reproduction.

It certainly plays as a highlight reel of the director’s career and even shares its title with a 1970s short he made, forcing us to confront what we’ve enjoyed about Cronenberg’s work as well.

But as Viggo’s character attempts to sleep in a Giger-esque organic sleeping pod with slimy tendrils, we are brought into a world where every trope from the director’s work gets a chance to shine. A man has ears grafted onto his head like the body-meshing of Seth Brundel in The Fly. And the erotic licking of scars and wounds nod directly to Crash.

But does it go too far? Well, it’s not for the faint at heart but its back-alley body modifications are nothing particular unique for anyone familiar with Cronenberg’s previous, and frankly superior, output.

There are also echoes of Videodrome with its focus on the voyeuristic pleasures of ‘performance’ in itself. With Léa Seydoux as Tenser's partner, this is cemented with her surgical operating theatre acting as an actual theatre for the entertainment of paying patrons.

Kristen Stewart as a member of the National Organ Registry does well in a support role but the film sadly slips into theological drudgery. I was often only jolted back into the story during scenes of visceral orgasmic flesh cutting. The film’s high aspirations are unfortunately undercut by a script full of tedious heady themes and dull essay-like interactions.

It’s great to see Cronenberg still pushing the right buttons but unlike (one of my favourite horrors of all time) The Fly, the film being challenging and thought-provoking is at the expense of it being entertaining. An absolute stone-cold example of impenetrable art-house film, the movie will almost certainly find its chin-stroking fans. But for all the visceral horrors presented, the stultifying dialogue and repetitious subject matter may actually be the film’s biggest crime.

★★½

2.5/5

Michael Sales