eXistenZ
I can’t remember if “eXistenZ” was my first time with David Cronenberg’s brand of horror filmmaking, or if “The Fly” was, but it was early enough to grab a hold of me, and make me think, “What the fuck did I just watch?” Even his non-horror films can have that effect on you as a viewer, and this one, he finds a way to bring his sensibilities of horror into a story about virtual reality where we question everything, right up to the final scene. It doesn’t quite hold up, but it’s still a fun piece of genre storytelling from the director.
The film starts in a church, as a group of video game fans are brought together by Antenna, a game design company, to be among the first to try their latest offering, eXistenZ. The game’s designer, Allegra Gellar (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is in attendance, and will walk them through the test gameplay. Someone in the crowd, a Realist who believes video games are a cancer on society, has arrived late, and got an organically-made gun past the security guard (Ted Pikul, played by Jude Law), and shoots Allegra. Amid the chaos, Ted gets her out of the church, and the two are on the run, and try to get off the grid while Allegra tries to salvage her gamepod, which contains the only known copy of eXistenZ.
There are a lot of twists and turns at work in “eXistenZ” that Cronenberg makes feel seamless, as we move back-and-forth between the real world and the reality of the game, so much so that we question everything we think we know by the time the film reaches its climax. This is complex storytelling that has a clear through line, and doesn’t cheat its premise, which “The Matrix”- which came out shortly before this in 1999- does a little bit as it takes us through the rabbit hole. What I’m kind of shocked by is how it was inspired by Cronenberg talking to Salman Rushdie, whom had a Fatwa put on his life by Muslim extremists. Cronenberg adapts that idea into one about virtual-reality games, and the people who play them, bringing an intellectual idea into what could have simply been a chase movie. In a way, Cronenberg is commenting on people who see culture- whether it’s books, video games, movies, music- as the downfall of society, and the idea that this was released so close to Columbine, where that issue became inflamed once again, is fascinating to consider after the fact. Cronenberg’s voice is putting ideas in genre, and “eXistenZ” is a strong, and still vital, example of that.
The part of the film that made me think, “What the fuck did I just watch?,” when I first saw it 2000, I think, was Cronenberg’s horror touches. “The Fly” and “Scanners,” which I just watched for the first time before this rewatch, show Cronenberg’s fascination with biological horror, and the effects on the body; what “eXistenZ” does with that is bring it to the idea of how these virtual-reality games work. The gamepod is a gross, fleshly-looking device that sits on your lap, and connect to you via an umbilical cord-like, well, cord that plugs into a bioport you get in your spine. The symbolism is not lost on anyone watching this film, and it goes all the way to the gun that is first used to try and kill Allegra, which is made of bone, hidden in flesh, and fires teeth. This is Cronenberg asserting his vision on an idea he is coming to, and adding another layer of reality, or lack thereof, to. This is kind of a gem for the great genre filmmaker.
