Many have tried but few do 'body-horror' quite like David Cronenberg so I suppose fans should welcome "Crimes of the Future" as a return to the kind of movies that turned us on, or indeed turned us off, Cronenberg in the first place. This is a sci-fi movie grounded in some kind of reality. Yes, there are 'monsters' but the monsters are us, recognizably human, but transmogrified into something beyond what we are now.
You see, humans are growing new organs and the most famous of these is Saul Tenser, (Viggo Mortensen, looking rather disinterested in what's going on). Saul has his new organs removed by his glamorous assistant Caprice, (Lea Seydoux), in a public display, captured mostly on people's mobile phones, which they call 'performance art'. Once upon a time this would qualify as a 'freak-show' but in this age of political correctness there are no longer any 'freaks'; vive la difference!.
You might say with this movie Cronenberg is challenging us to look at the human body differently and defying us to put words like 'freak' or 'deformed' out of our minds entirely or more cynically you could say he was exploiting his characters, feeding on our desire for the bizarre. Is "Crimes of the Future" any less of a horror film than "Shivers" or indeed "Freaks" or even "Nosferatu"?
It seems we love, not only to be frightened, but to be disturbed and it seems once again Cronenberg is out to disturb us. Unfortunately it also seems he may be out to bore us; there are no 'frights' in this horror film which moves at a funereal pace, an exploitation picture that is pretentious enough to think we should take it seriously and it is likely its limited appeal will be only to diehard Cronenberg fans. I doubt if anyone else will consider it one of his better pictures
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