Director Report Card: David Cronenberg (2022)

22. Crimes of the Future

When David Cronenberg's “Map to the Stars” came out in 2014, it was the latest in a critically acclaimed run of psychological dramas from the man once known as the King of Venereal Horror. It was also, sad to say, one of the director's weakest films. For eight long years, it seemed like that might be the final statement from the director too, as he suggested a while back he might even be retiring. Luckily, some financial backers decided we needed more Cronenberg in our lives. The director would make his return this year, in more ways than one. “Crimes of the Future” took its title from a 1970 student film and would be adapted from a script he wrote in 2003 called "Painkillers." These were both clues that the director would be returning to the body-horror that first made him famous, making the new “Crimes of the Future” an event for a certain breed of cinema-loving weirdos.

Set in a world where scientific advances have widely eliminated the ability to feel pain, and pollution has led to bizarre physiological mutations, “Crimes of the Future” follows performance artist Saul Tenser. Saul grows superfluous new organs on an almost nightly basis, which have to be tattooed and cataloged by the government. As part of his act, he has the organs removed while laying in an elaborate robotic machine originally designed to perform autopsies. Saul is contacted by the father of a murdered son, part of an underground culture of people who have evolved to digest inorganic material. Saul is asked to perform a public autopsy on the dead son. He's also contacted by a government agency created to investigate these new evolutionary changes.

As a long time fan of Cronenbery's early horror movies, I was always a little disappointed in the way he drifted away from the more extreme side of his style. Don't get me wrong, I think “A History of Violence” is great and even found plenty of things to like about “A Dangerous Method” or “Spider.” Yet those latter films always felt like Cronenberg had made a conscious choice to move on from the grisly material that defined him and onto more prestigious material. “Crimes of the Future,” I am happy to say, is a proud return to the mutated flesh and kinky sex that defined Cronenberg's earlier films. In fact, “Crimes of the Future” is such a distillation of what we think of when we think of Cronenberg that it borders self-parody at times. It's full of pulsating organs, throbbing growths, and people being enamored – erotically and socially – of these bodily mutations.

If all of Cronenberg's movies have been about the internal becoming external – whether via throbbing tumors bursting through the skin or psychological delusions inflicting themselves on reality – then “Crimes of the Future” moves this idea into an interesting, new direction. In this future, evolution has become a revolutionary act. Environment pollution, such as the proliferation of microplastics in the drinking water, has caused people to develop the ability to digest such material. Like Seth Brundel or the creators of the “Videodrome” signals before them, these mutants consider themselves a bold new step in human biology that deserve to exist. It almost plays like satire of political ideology, something so absurd and bizarre becoming the basis of an underground movement. Yet “Crimes of the Future” feels fairly sincere in its exploration of the idea that a changing world means our definition of humanity must eventually change too.

Yet this is only one aspect of the film. Like all performance art, Saul Tenser and his contemporaries force us to ask what the nature of art is. Saul's act involves laying in a bizarre machine, which cuts out his new organs and then puts them on display. It's an action that the film approaches with scientific detachment, squishy wet innards simply being laid on a table next to Saul's contraption. Yet the audiences love it, Saul being treated as a celebrity of sorts. He has fans, who regard him with hushed awe, and even an attempted groupie. There's also some creative disagreements with his partner, Caprice, suggesting all of this is meant to be an absurdist riff on performance art pretensions by Cronenberg.

At the same time, I think a clear point is being made here. Saul looks at other, similar artists with some bemusement. Another performer has sewn his eyes and lips shut while sprouting ears from his whole body, before dancing for an audience. Saul seems unimpressed with such theater and it's not too hard to guess why. Saul literally pulls his guts out before an audience and shows them off, as direct a metaphor as one can think of for the act of being a creative person. His art dictates his life, his body literally changing around him as his creative impulses shift. The pain he feels from his body mutating keeps him up at night. And if he doesn't perform, and have these strange new organs cut out, he'll die. Inside “Crimes of the Future” is a potent metaphor for the creative progress.

If “Crimes of the Future” has us asking what art is, it also prompts us to wonder what sex is. The most quotable line in the film is “Surgery is the new sex.” We see this play out rather literally. In a world where pain isn't a factor, people slice open their flesh and probe their fingers inside their partner's skin. They all seem pretty into it. Saul and Caprice share an intimate moment inside his autopsy pod, while the little blades cut into them. In this world, it seems bodily penetration has taken on all sorts of new forms. It's a rather obtuse metaphor for how technology can change sexuality. Is internet cyber-sex the distant ancestor of the extreme forms of sensual exploration seen here? If "Crimes of the Future" is all about how humanity evolves, it seems unavoidable that our definition of sex would evolve too. 

Yet I don't think Cronenberg is including these images of bizarre, sadomasochistic paraphilias just to explore his film's theme. I think he likes them. "Crimes of the Future" is maybe the director's kinkiest movie. The cold, scientific detachment that characterized the NC-17 humping in "Crash" isn't present here. Instead, the focus is on the participants' faces, on the obvious pleasure and passion they feel. When Saul has an organic zipper installed that allows easy access to his innards, Caprice uses it to essentially go down on him. In a moment that recalls the motor oil slathered threesome from "Fast Company," a duo of minor characters, technicians for the film's bizarre technology, are so enamored of Saul's vintage autopsy pod that they strip down and crawl inside together. It really seems to me that these moments are here mostly because Dave thinks they are sexy, funny, or both. The protagonist himself admits he's not good at the "old sex" and you wonder if he's speaking for the filmmaker in this scene too. "Crimes of the Future" is, in its own bizarre way, a celebration of alternative sexual practices. 

Of the many classical Cronenberg ideas explored here, one seems a little less essential than the others. The government investigator who interviews Saul from time to time never really contributes much to the story. The eventual conspiracy that forms around the plastic eaters seems to exist mostly as a way to resolve that particular plot point. Both of these subplots are bluntly forgotten by the time the somewhat abrupt ending arrives. It feels like some aspects had to be cut short for time or budgetary reasons. "Crimes of the Future" is mostly a short visit to this strange world and not all of its ideas are as thoroughly explored as they could or should be.

There are other clues that, perhaps, the budget here was a bit limited. The various devices seen throughout "Crimes of the Future" recall the biomechanical game console of "eXistenZ." Saul sits in a chair that constantly shifts his body around as he eats, whose armrest and spindles resemble shifting, waxy bones. The autopsy pod is like an enormous crustacean structure, with plated appendages that reach inside. This stuff looks pretty cool. Yet the squishy organs look more rubbery and less convincing. This is especially true of the corpse that appears prominently in the last act, that looks very artificial. A splashy gore gag, which feels like something from Cronenberg's seventies movies, looks fairly chintzy too. It's clear that there was only so much money and resources available for the make-up effects.

While the part was nearly played by Nicolas Cage back when the project was still called "Painkillers," a collaboration that is wild to imagine, ultimately Saul Tenser would be brought to life by Virgo Mortensen. His fourth appearance in a Cronenberg movie, it's clear by now that Viggo's sensibilities line up with his director. Spending most of the movie in an obscuring black hood, Mortensen constantly coughs and clears his throat throughout the film. While it's a performance full of eccentricities, Viggo is always compelling. The physical aspect of the part, the constant discomfort Saul feels, is well conveyed while the actor brings a wry humor to many of the film's weirder scenes. 

Mortensen has good chemistry with Léa Seydoux, who plays Caprice. She brings a quiet intensity to the role, seeming very serious about everything the film presents with her. Kristen Stewart – whose appearance in a Cronenberg movie felt inevitable at this point – has a supporting role, as a government worker who classifies Saul's new organs. Stewart brings a nervous, uneasy energy to her performance that plays off the other actors in the film nicely. I've never given much thought to Scott Speedman before but he does a decent job as the father of the murder son. Don McKellar, as the New Vice investigator, is also charming in his handful of scenes.

”Crimes of the Future” is not a new masterpiece in the Cronenberg canon. Often, it feels like the director just having fun exploring the themes and images he's been best known for in the past. But being a fan of Cronenberg's body-horror filled tales of weird sci-fi, I did enjoy seeing him mess around with these familiar toys. “Crimes of the Future” has a bit of a shaggy script but is still tightly paced, with more far-out ideas than many directors cover in their entire careers. One can't help but wonder if “Crimes” feels this way because the director was easing himself back into filmmaking after a long hiatus. He already has a follow-up in the pipeline, so hopefully it won't take as long for a new Cronenberg feature to be unleashed. “Crimes of the Future” is weird, conceptual, kinky, gory, and endlessly intriguing even if some parts of it hold together better than others. [Grade: B]