eXistenZ (1999)

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nTitle: eXistenZ (1999)

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nDirector: David Cronenberg

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nCast: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Willem Dafoe, Ian Holm

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neXistenZ comes to us from David Cronenberg a director whonloves to swim in the waters of the philosophical, the psychosexual, the violentnand the just plain horrifying. Cronenberg explores the most basic parts ofnhuman nature: violence and sex. If we look through most of Cronenberg’s films,nthey all deal with many of these same themes. Take for example The Fly (1986); anvery sexual film about a scientist who embraces his aggressive side once henstarts turning into the monstrous Fly; everything ends rather violently on thatnone. The Brood (1979) is about a woman who externalizes all her worst feelingsnby giving birth to these violent, murderous little kids. Scanners (1981) is allnabout the power of the mind! And the abuse of that power! Again, on Scanners humansnembrace their violent side, the end result is a confrontation between two powerfulnScanners and the end result is not a happy one. A History of Violence (2005),nwell, the title says it all, but again, a very violent and sexual film.

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nVideodrome (1983) is a good example as well; aside from thenthemes Cronenberg usually addresses in his films, Videodrome is a film that exploresnthe media and humanities obsession with it. Why do we love television so much?nWhy are we so obsessed with what we see? “The television screen is the retinanof the mind’s eye” Cronenberg goes on to explore our obsession with all the sexnand violence shown on television. It seems Cronenberg is making a case fornhumanity; as if he wants us to live in the real world rather than spending ourntime sitting in front of a television, obsessed with porn and graphic violence.nThe image of a television gobbling up James Woods lets us know exactly whatnCronenberg was concerned with while making Videodrome; television is consumingnus! It’s no wonder that at some point a character yells “death to Videodrome!nLong live the new flesh!”  It’s as ifnCronenberg’s characters had a personal battle against television screens, anbattle between freedom of the mind vs. a mind enslaved by television programming;na battle that I’m sad to say humanity has lost. Many take for granted whatevernis spewed out of the television screen.

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nWhat eXistenZ does is play with these themes presented innVideodrome, but from the point of view of video games. Same as television,nvideogames offer an escape. In fact, if we get right down to it, video gamesnare a much more immersive experience. You essentially get to live a ‘second life’;nyou control an alter ego through imaginary worlds. In these games you live or dienby the decisions you make, in this way, videogames serve as an allegory fornreal life. You make the right choices; you just might make it to the end. Modernnsociety is just as obsessed with videogames because they offer an escape notnunlike the virtual reality worlds that appear in films like Johnny Mnemonic (1995)nor The Matrix (1999). You plug yourself in and you’re in another world fornhours on end if you like. But, at what point does the videogame world becomenmore interesting than the real world?

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nIn eXistenZ we meet Allegra Geller, a video game programmernwho is trying out her new game with a test audience, just to see how they likenit and to work out any kinks. In a way, eXistenZ reminded me of Total Recall (1989)nbecause in eXistenZ, once you plug into the virtual reality world of the game,nthings start to get bat shit insane, which of course is where the fun starts. Thenthing about eXistenZ is that same as as in Videodrome, there’s people out therenfighting to disconnect humans from the fakeness of the game world, fighting fornhumans to live out their real lives instead of their virtual ones. So we haventhese guerilla groups who are out to kill videogame programmers, which is whatnthe film is mostly about. Allegra Geller and her bodyguard Ted Pikul runningnfrom these anti-gaming terrorist organizations.

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nMany things make this one extremely watchable, first of allnis that feeling of ‘what the hell is going on here’ you’ll feel throughout thenwhole film. The feeling that you know something’s wrong, but you can’t quite putnyour finger on what it is. Are we in the game? Or are we in the real world? Thennwe have Willem Defoe playing a character called ‘Gas’; really freaky type ofncharacter. Then there’s the body horror element, in the form of the actualngaming system. The best way I can describe it is imagine if your gaming systemnwas a living being that you had to take care of and that you plug directly intonyour spinal cord whenever you want to play? Like in many Cronenberg films, there’snsome really gory scenes, overall, exactly the type of thing you’d expect from Cronenberg.nSo yeah, this is one of those movies with a real weird vibe to it, similar innsomeways to Cronenberg’s own Videodrome and films like Tron (1982) or ThenMatrix (1999), where most of the film takes place in a virtual reality world; onlynthis virtual reality world comes from the twisted mind of David Cronenberg,nwhich is a-okay in my book.  

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nRating: 4 out of 5

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