- Title: Crimes of the Future
- IMDb: link
Writer/director David Cronenberg returns to science fiction and body horror in a film about the evolution of the human race and the spectacle of surgery as entertainment. Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux star as a pair of artists in this new world. His body continues to grow new organs which she removes in front of an audience as both spectacle and, as both admit to each other, sex.
Not approving of his methods, the government doesn’t have a problem with the artists as much as those facing the same medical conditions and choosing to keep the organs, becoming something different than human. This plotline introduces Scott Speedman as one such person, and a pair of organ registration bureaucrats (Don McKellar and Kristen Stewart) tie the two stories together. We also get a pair of technicians (Nadia Litz and Tanaya Beatty) who work for the biotechnology company doing their part to keep the status quo.
While delivering on an odd future and plenty of body horror for fans of the genre, Crimes of the Future isn’t as clean as some of Cronenberg’s previous works with a bit too much going on at once. It’s weird, to be sure, but neither bold nor shocking. The bizarre design of the futuristic machines, and the performances of Mortensen and Seydoux are highlights, but in the end Crimes of the Future is a bit of a mixed bag in that the big ideas (evolution, surgery as art, what it means to be human, performance, partnership, fetish, and sex) Cronenberg plays with here are often lost among too many characters and plot threads which cannot all be fully developed in under two hours.
Watch the trailer
