“Crimes of the Future” Movie Review by Rafy Mediavilla (@Rmediavilla). #CrimesOfTheFuture
Humans adapt to a synthetic environment, with new transformations and mutations. With his partner Caprice, Saul Tenser, celebrity performance artist, publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances.
David Cronenberg comes of if his give or take 8 years hiatus and deliver another that has his signature patent pending body horror trademark all over it. While I don’t consider myself a follower of his work, curiosity got the better and I had to cave him and watch his project. I consider myself a fan of the horror genre, and it also helped the fact that Kristen Stewart was part of the cast to give a little push.
The first thing that caught my eye, beside Stewart, was the story behind this Cronenberg project. He is painting the idea of a world where humans must adapt to their surroundings and the human body start to regenerate organs to adapt and survive. With that now surgeries are common thing and even consider pleasure process. But honestly this is all in the story that gets completely develop.
The second thing that caught my eyes, in Cronenberg fashion, is how he beautifully and masterfully handle the many body horror scenes that are part of the project. As if, now pain, suffering, and bruises in this futuristic world where consider works of art. With this I’m not saying people are not susceptible to seeing bodies being cut open wide should go out and run to theaters and go see the movie, no by any means don’t or do it as a fair warning and at your own risk. What I’m saying is the way he handles these scenes in cinema terms feel like works of art.
What didn’t work for me are the subplots of the story. There where so many unanswered twists and turns from how the movie started to how it ended that I absolutely felt empty to my overall thoughts of what I just saw. I came out of that theater honestly wanted to see more from these subplots. Wanting to see more of the gang that was tattooing the organs, wanted to see more about the chocolate bars experiment, and the undercover work Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) was doing, and we never go to the the inner body beauty pageant. And don’t get me wrong most of these subplots should be analyze as metaphors but still would love these to be develop a bit more.
Regarding the performance of the cast, I don’t really have much to add. They all did great; they all did their part to tell the story. But nobody really stood out. The story and what Cronenberg is trying to tell is what stands out here.
In the end this is movie a extremely niche audience, beyond the Cronanberg crowd, fans of the horror genre may enjoy it. Conspiracy theories esthetics may get a kick of this futurist world, but casual movie goers may end up getting up and leaving the theaters maybe halfway to the movie.
