eXistenZ

Wouldn't it be great, if you could really recreate, a world inside a simulation, to release imagination, everything feels like it should, you just need to have a plug, connected into your back socket, a human docking kind of pocket, then enact against your friends, a myriad of worlds to blend, conjure up crazy locations, solving puzzles and creations, couldn't tell which world you're on, reproduction or the one, perhaps you're visiting there now, but haven't worked out why or how.

An innovative and perpetually relevant story of how we'll all be hoodwinked in the end. Let's just hope we have the chance to pause or cancel while we still can.

'eXistenZ' sorts out the men from the boys. That is, your reaction to this marvellous movie will depend whether you are S.F. literate and familiar with Cronenberg's oeuvre, or a 'Matrix'-loving, Johnny-come-lately. Now I enjoy 'The Matrix' as a superior action movie, but no movie in recent years has been so overrated, and grossly exaggerated as intellectual fare! 'eXistenZ' and Alex Proyas' similarly overlooked 'Dark City' are everything 'The Matrix' claims to be - intelligent, thought provoking, CHALLENGING S.F.

This movie is almost a summary of all the themes and motifs that Cronenberg has been obsessed about for the last 25 years or so. Especially the Burroughsian "biological horror" and the Phildickian questioning of reality. While it echoes many of his previous movies, it especially evokes his masterpiece 'Videodrome'. It may not reach the hallucinogenic heights of that movie - very few have - but it certainly takes you to places most contemporary S.F. and horror movies don't even try to reach.

However this movie isn't just Cronenberg rehashing his "greatest hits". There are more than enough new and interesting touches, especially the Rushdie-like Fatwah theme, the odd sexual symbolism, and the witty touches such as the bone guns that fire teeth. Helping all this along is the interesting, carefully chosen cast. All are good, but I especially like Willem Dafoe's creepy garage mechanic, and it was also great to see Canadian cult star Don McKellar ('Highway 61', 'Twitch City',etc) as the enigmatic "Russian" Yevgeny.

'Videodrome' has taken many years to find its real audience, and maybe 'eXistenz' will too. But I believe eventually it will be recognised for what it is - a work of great imagination and flair.

"eXistenZ" is like a missing link. It was clearly overshadowed by other movies of a similar nature, but I believe "eXistenZ" is a quality addition to the sci-fi genre that focuses on alternate digital reality. Or we could say virtual reality. It follows right in the mold of movies like "Tron," "Videodrome," "Lawnmower Man," and "Virtuosity." And it was totally overshadowed in 1999 by the uber-popular "The Matrix."

"eXistenZ" is a crude virtual reality gaming movie. Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is a world-renown game creator who has just designed a groundbreaking VR game. This VR game could be played like other VR games in this movie by the user plugging the "game pod" (which looks like an amorphous sack of skin covered flesh) into a "bio port" in the spine. Once in the game the users can barely distinguish between game and reality.

Allegra Geller had enemies who were from the Realists Underground. They were intent on killing her and destroying her creation so that reality as we know it wouldn't be compromised. If only the Realists Underground had been available when the Matrix was created.

Even though the execution of the movie wasn't the best, the concept was great. It really was a lower budget form of "The Matrix" or "Ready Player One." Like an episode of "The Twilight Zone," this movie got into that blurred line between reality and virtual reality and the possibility of not being able to distinguish one from the other. It was a mind melter of "Inception" proportions that should be given a gander.

"We're both stumbling around together in this unformed world, whose rules and objectives are largely unknown, seemingly indecipherable or even possibly nonexistent, always on the verge of being killed by forces that we don't understand." So says Ted Pikul in the film. Which for some people sums up life and 'eXistenZ' probably is a film about existence. What is real and what is unreal and how you tell the difference. Or not. The last line of the film is superbly ambiguous.

The film seems like a shaggy dog story (indeed it has a real shaggy dog in it) but it takes you along on an interesting ride, full of provocative Cronenberg touches that will make you look at amphibians, game pods, fish, spines and bones in a new light. Some bits are quite icky. It takes place in a rural setting where the gas station is called 'GAS STATION' and a Chinese restaurant is called 'CHINESE RESTAURANT.'The film has an engrossing texture that is leagues away from your usual big budget science fiction movie.You can read many things into the film and it repays watching more than once.

The main actors are Jude Law who is OK and Jennifer Jason Leigh who is great. Some roles don't suit this very talented actor but when she has a good role like this she is unmatchable. Her unconventional beauty and fascinating voice suits the part of Allegra. (Looks great in a short black skirt too.) There are other familiar actors but they are not given much to do. It looks good, sounds good and a Howard Shore score complements the film very well. Cronenberg is possibly the Alfred Hitchcock of the sci-fi/horror genre. No matter what film he makes he is always worth watching.

David Cronenberg is doubtlessly one of the greatest directors alive and in activity (along with Lynch, Kiarostami, Kitano, Moretti, Oliveira, Rohmer, etc). Having seen almost all of his films (excluding "Dead Zone", "The Fly" and "M.Butterfly"), I have this somewhat rare opinion that "eXistenZ" is one of his masterpieces. It seems to me that this film was hugely misunderstood, culminating with the stupid idea of comparing this film to "Matrix", a rather worthless and meaningless piece of nonsense. Here in "eXistenZ", we have instead a very dense and deep meditation on the mystery of reality, of our inability to apprehend where do things come from. The characters appear and disappear as if moved by some mysterious agent, which remains inhapreenshible. Being Cronenberg a professed atheist, we can only arrive at the conclusion that each world which is presented to us and to the main characters comes from their own mind, which, nevertheless, only constitutes a part of the human body (it is now hazard that the characters have access to the game by means of something - a game pod - which is implanted into their bodies). Cronenberg stated many years ago that all reality is virtual; so, in this film, the use of the plot-device of virtual reality is a huge metaphor to the virtually of reality, as our director sees it.