It’s been a minute since we had a new feature film from body-horror master David Cronenberg. His last directorial outing was 2014’s Maps to the Stars, which followed the Robert Pattinson-starring Cosmopolis and the unexpected period piece A Dangerous Method. The writer-director-actor has kept busy, with roles on Alias Grace and Star Trek: Discovery, but it’s been a while since we got to stare in awe and horror at some Cronenbergian images.
That wait is over. The one-minute teaser for his new film Crimes of the Future is uneasy and disconcerting and gorgeous and really just yikes. In a good way.
The film reunites Cronenberg with Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises, A History of Violence). It also stars Léa Seydoux (The French Dispatch) and none other than Kristen Stewart. Here’s the summary:
As the human species adapts to a synthetic environment, the body undergoes new transformations and mutations. With his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux), Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), celebrity performance artist, publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances. Timlin (Kristen Stewart), an investigator from the National Organ Registry, obsessively tracks their movements, which is when a mysterious group is revealed… Their mission – to use Saul’s notoriety to shed light on the next phase of human evolution.
This is very mysterious! And the teaser is very creepy! It reminds me a little bit of the once-banned (and clearly Cronenberg-influenced) Nine Inch Nails video in which Trent Reznor does something very not nice to his body! But this is Art, not … whatever that process was. And I’m really stuck on “National Organ Registry,” as well as on the character named Caprice.
There’s a lot to absorb here. Crimes of the Future arrives in theaters in June.
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