Movie Review: eXistenZ (1999) directed by David Cronenberg
In the not so distant future, virtual reality games are a commonplace. At a deconsecrated church, genius game designer Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is about to plug a dozen lucky volunteers into a demonstration of her new title, eXistenZ. But just as she’s activating the main biopod, one of the audience members turns out to be an assassin toting a biotech gun that evaded the metal detector at the door. Allegra’s shot, and her biopod may have been damaged, so she has to go on the run with newbie PR flack Ted Pikul (Jude Law).
Realizing that Antenna Research may have been infiltrated, Allegra insists on going off the grid. In order to make sure that her biopod, which contains the only master copy of eXistenZ, is still operable, she wants to play the game with Ted. Problem! Ted has a horror of surgery and has never been fitted with the bioport in his spine necessary to play VR games.
After a couple of false starts, including an excellent performance by Willem Dafoe as a mechanic named “Gas”, Allegra and Ted are finally ready to play eXistenZ, but what they find there is so disturbing that Ted begins to suspect this isn’t a “game” at all. Or at least not a game you can win.
David Cronenberg is known for creepy body horror and blurring the lines of reality, and this movie does not disappoint on either front, starting with the fleshy biopods used to play the games of this world. Later on we find out how they’re made (or do we?) which is pretty freaky. The sort of thing Philip K. Dick might have written if he’d lived long enough to see video games really take off.
The acting and dialogue is sometimes a little wonky, but this is a deliberate effect as the characters navigate different levels of game/reality/game reality; some of them are just Non-Player Characters, but sometimes the protagonists also seem not quite real.
More recent events in the world of video gaming have lent extra resonance to certain parts of the movie, particularly the resentment towards the female game designer. Also, Christopher Eccleston has a small role for all you Doctor Who fans.
Content note: In addition to the body horror, there’s a scene that’s pretty much sexual assault, as Ted and Allegra are forced by the game to make out hot and heavy.
Overall, if you can stomach the horror portions, this is a fascinating look at immersive gaming and the potential pushback.
