Here's a long... VERY SPOILERISH review that goes into detail about Cronenberg's latest. Personally I only read the last paragraph and even caught a couple of things I didn't want to see. I won't read the script and I don't want to know.... But according to Father Geek (who did read it) you should love this. The person who wrote this... didn't completely enjoy the film... but then are you ever supposed to completely enjoy a Cronenberg film? I think you are supposed to Experience Cronenberg's movies, and this one sounds from Dad's reactions to be something worth experiencing. Like anything could keep me away...
I was recently able to catch a test screening of David Cronenberg's latest film "eXistenZ," (with a capital X and a capital Z, and the emphasis on the "enZ") so I figured I'd send in my review. "eXistenZ" stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law, with smaller appearances by Ian Holm and Willem DaFoe. The plot goes something like this: It's the not-too-distant future, and as the movie opens, we're at a testing session for a brand new type of, well, video game. Of course, this is the future, so video games aren't things you play on a screen, but rather they're bizarre flesh-colored organic lumps called game pods (that look like fetuses, make noises like Furbies, and squirm around a bit when they're activated) with an umbilical-cord type thing attached to them. This cord is plugged into something called a "bioport," which is a hole in a person's lower back that looks suspiciously like an anus (there were more lubricated penetration shots in this movie than most pornos -- there's even one particularly giggle-inducing scene where Jude Law gives Jennifer Jason Leigh's bioport a rimjob), but is actually a direct link to their spinal cord. Thus, when the cord is plugged in, the game taps into the person's mind, allowing a true virtual reality experience (if you've seen "Strange Days," which Cronenberg must have, you'll know what I'm talking about -- it's not exactly unfamiliar territory for sci-fi movies these days).
So Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Allegra Geller, the God of game designers, and the game testers in the opening scene just about crap their pants when she makes an appearance at the testing session to guide them through their first experience with her brand new game system, called "eXistenZ." Of course, there are complications: An underground movement called the "realists," who dedicate their lives to destroying these virtual reality systems and hunting down game designers like Geller (this is never effectively explained in the movie, I picked up on it right away only because I had read a fairly detailed plot synopsis prior to watching the film). Thus, a realist inevitably appears during the testing session, and starts shooting people while shouting "death to the demoness Allegra Geller," or something to that effect (his gun, oddly enough, is made out of flesh and bones, and shoots human teeth -- to get past the metal detectors). In the chaos that ensues, Geller is rushed out of the building by Jude Law, whose character is Ted Pikul, a "PR nerd" on hand at the testing, who ends up becoming Geller's bodyguard, as it seems that everyone wants her dead. The two escape together and drive to a motel, where Geller tells Pikul that her eXistenZ game pod has been damaged, and because she just finished developing it it's the only existing copy. Five years of work, she tells us, will be lost if she can't repair the system, but for some reason the only way to do that is to play the game with someone friendly ("Are you friendly?" she asks Pikul seductively. "Well, are you?"). But Pikul has never played these high tech video games because of his fear of getting a hole punched in his back, which I think is understandable. Geller convinces Pikul to help her, however, and lucky for him, you can get a bioport installed in any shopping mall, "just like getting your ear pierced." But it's late at night, and apparently his participation in the game is very urgent, so he gets an "illegal and unregistered" bioport from a 24-hour gas station employee. Sounds goofy? Well, it is. I won't reveal what happens at the gas station, but it begins a long and tiresome chain of double-crossings, attempts on Geller's life, and the eXistenZ game pod being broken and fixed again. This all eventually leads to Pikul and Geller playing the game together, and after all this waiting to see what this game's all about, it's a bit of a disappointment, especially since the rest of the movie is spent in the game. Of course, the theme of the realists continues in the game in a way that doesn't really make sense. What happens in the game seems to have little comprehensible connection to what was happening to these people when they entered the game, and on more than one occasion I found myself wishing the game would end for a while so all the running around from evil realists in real life could continue. But is it real life at all? The movie plays so many "wait a minute, that wasn't actually reality" tricks that by the end of the movie (which is kind of a cop-out, though with a somewhat satisfying twist) I found myself not really caring anymore.
There was also the unavoidable element of cheese, which came mostly in the form of goofy techno words like "bioport," "jack in," "neurosurge," "game pod," etc. and some silly lines of dialogue here and there. The acting wasn't particularly a problem (though I can't say this was anywhere near the best performances by any of the actors involved), but I never got a sense that either of the main actors (especially Jude Law, who sounds a bit goofy when hiding his english accent) really felt any more involved in this world of "eXistenZ" than I did. Their characters were written poorly, as well. Geller, who we were supposed to sympathize with, was mostly an annoying bitch in real life. She also didn't seem to know anything about this game she spent five years creating, she fumbled around in it with no more sense of experience than Pikul had. But Pikul was even worse, he didn't seem to know anything about the whole world they lived in at all. He acted like a visitor from the past, unfamiliar with almost everything about this future world. At one point, for example, he spots a bizarre little creature crawling on his car, and, acting as surprised as we are to see it, says "What is that? Some kind of big bug?" "It's a mutated amphibian," Geller explains, and rattles off something about a combination salamander/frog/lizard with two heads before saying, "sign of the times." What?? How could Pikul not know about these things, as if the appearance of weird two-headed creatures wouldn't be front page news. The creature, incidentally, serves little purpose in the film except as a special effect. We do learn late in the movie that the two-headed amphibians are from an assortment of mutated animals whose organs are used to create the game pods, but even that doesn't make much sense. It's just one of the many things we're supposed to accept as fact in this movie, and there are lots of plot holes as well (including a weird battle scene, supposedly in the game, that is just ludicrous). There is also an incredible amount of blood and gore, more than seems necessary. Some scenes of shootings and exploding bodies and blood-spurting bioports and whatnot are so viciously graphic that even I was shocked, and I've got quite a tolerance built up by now. If you're a fan of gore, however, there are a few can't-miss scenes in this movie.
All in all, the film had some good ideas and a few decent scenes, but it just didn't come together as a whole. Its main problem is that it's kind of silly, and it just doesn't make a lot of sense. For some people that problem will be resolved in the ending, but personally I thought that the ending, despite being clever in it's own little way, was too much of an easy way out of a confusing plot which I was, for a while, actually becoming interested in, at least in the respect of being curious how Cronenberg was going to guide us out of it. "eXistenZ" was one of those movies that, for one reason or another, just didn't feel like a real movie, and I wasn't exactly sure at the end what I had just sat through. Further proof, I suppose, that "we're trapped in virtual reality" plots should probably just be avoided in the film industry.
Squee.
