Crimes of the Future

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] (07/07/2022)

While David Cronenberg's previous genre-diverse films seemed to exist in a complex and vibrant world, Crimes of the Future seems to exist in just three barracks surrounded by a vacuum. It does have thoughts and ideas, but the framework is so clumsily put together that few will be satisfied or surprised by the story this time. And while I understand that the budget was low and the pandemic situation affected the production, I still can't get over the fact that the film is more like an amateur theatre performance than the truly compelling piece of cinema we would like to see from this director. [KVIFF 2022] (06/07/2022)

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. (22/06/2022)

Cronenberg, as I like and dislike him. Visually I found it as poor as his minimalist Spider, David doesn't even deliver atmosphere anymore, and the few bizarre sarcophagi are not enough. On the other hand, the microworld presented by the five main characters is so creepy that it's kind of fun to watch if you're in the right mood. You just feel like some creepy voyeur watching a couple of weirdos licking each other's bodily deformities through a keyhole. Here, for "licking" add groping abdomens, pulling out tumors, cutting into the skin and making a zipper on the abdominal incision (anyone heard of Videodrome?). Ultimately, the most entertaining part of the whole film is the pissed-off frustration of uninformed male and female viewers who leave during the screening because they were expecting "something nice" with Mortensen, and instead they see people pulling tattooed entrails out of their stomachs. David, that's why I still like you :o) (05/07/2022)

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 % (03/07/2022)