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David Cronenberg is undoubtedly the father of the body horror genre in the sense we intend it today. Films such as Videodrome, The Fly, Naked Lunch have pushed boundaries towards its goriest and most grotesque margins. His latter films were however non-horror: Eastern Promises, A History of Violence and Cosmopolis all proved the worth of the canadian filmmaker outside the genre. Crimes of the Future was to be his glorious return to his origins, being a science fiction horror centered on a society in which the understanding of body and pleasure are different. Whether Crimes actually is the coveted film, remains to be seen.
Right from the first scene featuring Viggo Mortensen, the film strongly reminds of Cronenberg’s past masterworks, in the implementation of similar props to Naked Lunch for example. This sensation remains always there on the surface, but somehow never truly blossoms, even when those scenes come up, that should have made audiences at Cannes flee the screening room according to Cronenberg, the form of gore that we are presented is not as gruesome as it was in the classic films by the filmmaker.
What emerges from Crimes of the Future is the feeling that it could have been far, far more radical.
Somehow neither the topics are studied deeply enough, nor the plot is entirely fleshed out: what we see is a two hours long first act of a film, a continuous worldbuilding that never reaches a storyline, even if there are several pinches that could have lead to one.
Since there is no way to know how much was the budget – presumably, low – and certainly, covid regulations also forced production to be small-scoped, these might be factors that lead to the aforementioned issues, but a more intricate or at least more complete storyline could have been derived even so. Its cast is certainly not to blame: Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux have a great chemistry, Kristen Stewart probably reminds too much of Spencer in her performance but still fits.
Some have deemed Crimes of the Future as Cronenberg’s most political film to date. This is partially true, if ecology is considered a political matter, but performance arts and the relation between body and meaning are central to the film. There is an interesting subtext that revolves around a newfound interpretation of the concepts of body and sexuality, yet somewhat a natural follow-up to the canadian filmmaker’s previous works, especially Videodrome. The co-inclusion of the ecologist subtext, which gradually takes over the narrative is however the authentic social commentary, but even so, its swift inclusion is too hasty for a deeper analysis.
What strikes most is Cronenberg's vision of the future, well structured albeit mysterious, criptical, not fully decipherable. The choice of the Athens downtowns as the location is most fitting for a broken, beat-down setting. Undeniably, it is Cronenberg's vision, coherent with his entire filmography. As aforementioned, worldbuilding is one of the strongpoints of the film, almost calling for a sequel, which will unlikely come, due to the arthouse nature of the feature.
Ultimately, Crimes of the Future is not the film it promised to be. It is a coda, an epilogue to Cronenberg’s more daring days, even if it has some interesting concepts that give it dignity.
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