By: Andrew Wing

Crimes of the Future is a 2022 science fiction body horror drama film written and directed by David Cronenberg (The Fly, Videodrome). The film stars Viggo Mortensen (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Green Book), Léa Seydoux (The Grand Budapest Hotel, No Time to Die), and Kristen Stewart (The Twilight Saga, Spencer).

It follows a performance artist duo (Mortensen and Seydoux) who perform surgery to audiences, in a future world where human evolution has accelerated for some individuals. Although the film shares its title with Cronenberg's 1970 film of the same name, it is not a remake as the story and concept are unrelated, and there is no connection between the two films whatsoever. The film marked Cronenberg's return to the science fiction and horror genres for the first time since Existenz (1999).

An international co-production of Canadian, French, British, and Greek companies, Crimes of the Future had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or and received a six-minute standing ovation. The film received a theatrical release in France on May 25, 2022, opened in Canada on June 3, 2022, and had a same-day limited release in the United States.

THE GOOD

You can’t be a cinephile and not know who David Cronenberg is. The Canadian film director is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation, infectious diseases, and the intertwining of the psychological, the physical, and the technological. Furthermore, he is best known for exploring these themes through sci-fi horror films like The Fly and Videodrome. That said, as much as I love sci-fi, I prefer Cronenberg’s drama thriller films such as A History of Violence and Cosmopolis. However, once I saw the trailer for Crimes of the Future, I was immediately hooked and knew that I wasn’t going to want to miss this. So did it live up to my expectations? Keep reading to find out!

It did! As previously mentioned, Cronenberg is the father of the body horror genre, a genre that despite its many challenging aspects has a number of great films, most recently Titane (see my full review here), which was one of the best films of 2021. That said, I was excited to see Cronenberg return to his true genre and he did not disappoint. He created this insane world where significant advances in biotechnology have led to the invention of machines and analog computers that can directly interface with and control bodily functions, and I was just in awe of his wild imagination. I’ll touch on some of the things I thought he could’ve done better later on in the review, but I thought this was a very well-directed film from Cronenberg and it’s great to see him back working in this genre.

As much as I liked the filmmaking from Cronenberg in Crimes of the Future, the thing I enjoyed the most were the performances we got. This was unlike any other performance I’ve seen from Viggo Mortensen before, but it was very good and pretty impressive to see his range. Léa Seydoux was also really good and I’ve just yet to see her give a bad performance. All that said, my favorite performance in this movie belonged to Kristen Stewart. She did this jittery, nervous kind of thing with her character Timlin, who is this weirdo, and I was totally on board with it and I honestly found her to be quite hilarious in the film too.

Aside from the performances though, the movie is visually striking so shout out to cinematographer Douglas Koch. The movie is very darkly lit and shady throughout, so much so that it made me question if it was ever daytime in this future world. Also, all of the interiors are very grimy and industrial looking. All in all, there is just great world-building here from the aesthetic presentation of the world. Oh, and the score by Howard Shore absolutely slaps and is without a doubt one of the best aspects of this movie!

THE BAD

It’s funny, the one complaint I have with the film is what will probably make more general audiences want to watch it, and that was that this movie didn’t deliver on being disgusting. I mean don’t get me wrong, there are a number of gross things that happen in this movie, but there are far crazier and gorier body horror films out there and the film was just a lot tamer than I expected. At the end of the day, I liked it and enjoyed it, but I was just disappointed in the lack of horror from Cronenberg and I thought he relied on exposition a bit too much. And lastly, when it comes to my complaints with Crimes of the Future, the end of this film just felt so abrupt and I really thought we were going to get another fifteen to thirty minutes where things really started to get crazy.

THE VERDICT

Although I wanted the film to be a lot crazier, Crimes of the Future is still a return to form for David Cronenberg. The world building was marvelous, the body horror was unsettling, and the performances from the big three were all amazing in their own different ways.