YNMS: Crimes of the Future (New Trailer)
Sunday, May 8, 2022 at 9:20AM by Mark Brinkerhoff
NEON, the enfant terrible of indie film distributors (Parasite, Titane, The Worst Person in the World, etc.), has released a full trailer for the new David Cronenberg film, Crimes of the Future, so you know what that means! Let’s roll…
Yes:
Welcome back, Cronenberg! It’s been eight looooong years since his last film (the sadly underwhelming Maps to the Stars), and, at nearly 80 years old, it’s no sure thing that we’ll get more. Time is a-wastin’, so thank God he continues to work his singular brand.
“I can feel you pulling things around in there.” We are in this! I like this.
Silver fox Viggo Mortensen—yum.
The atmospheric score and voiceover (by one Mlle. Léa Hélène Seydoux-Fornier de Clausonne) immediately establishes the tone. This is body-horror Cronenberg, something we’ve not had since…the ’90s?
“Body is reality” on those old, analog TVs = surreal period details + practical effects? Fingers crossed!
“From the mind of” is how you onboard an audience. Shortlisting Crash, The Fly, and Dead Ringers is how you orient them.
Is that a fleeting shot of the capsized Costa Concordia?!
Kristen Stewart. She is making choices and taking risks, the mode I like to see her in (even if/when it’s a big swing-and-a-miss).
No:
“Surgery is sex.” Err… The shot of the performer with half a dozen ears on his head, and mouth and eyes sewn up, is nightmare fuel. But clearly that’s the point.
Maybe So:
“Surgery is the new sex.” This is camp, so it’ll probably slay.
The tortured production history of Crimes of the Future (with Nicolas Cage once attached to star!) may give pause.
Cronenberg’s last foray into the body-horror genre was eXistenZ, which I didn’t love, and Crash, which I’ve grown to love. This could go either way, obviously, but let’s hope for the latter.
Incidentally, Crash (the good one!) debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in ’96, where it won a Jury Prize. Could it bode well for this, also premiering at Cannes this month, competing for the Palme d’Or? (Imaging two body-horror films winning the top prize, back to back!)
Seydoux. I love her. Some don’t.
Mortensen’s reteaming with Cronenberg seems wise, considering his confounding output of late. (The less said about Green Book, the better.)
All in all, I’m a yes. What say you? Are we happy to have a new Cronenberg? A Cronenberg-Mortensen reunion? To have Stewart potentially join his repertoire (after Robert Pattinson)?
Reader Comments (4)
Like the other David (Lynch), I go for any cinematic oeuvre David Cronenberg creates and authors. The trailer is all snippets of disjointed body parts: ripped apart, un-joined and re-assembled. The grotesquerie is right there and quite appealingly edited. I will watch this, if not for another filmic statement from Cronenberg, then for the bizarro phantasmagoria of images, or possibly from the actors involved (wish Deborah Kara Unger is cast too). A yes for me just because any Cronenberg is better than no Cronenberg at all.
I like eXistenZ whose original title I think was 'Crimes of the Future' so maybe this will be kith and kin to the new one. But the older I get, I gravitate towards stories with hopeful futures even if they are not happy ones. This film doesn't look like it but as this is yet another Cronenbergian landscape, so... it's a yes.
The only thing that gives me pause and it's only small is I find Lea a blank unexpressive prescence,sold on the back to body horror vibe,very Videodrome in places.
I do want to see this as I love Cronenberg as I do forgive him for Cosmopolis which I think is his worst film as I was just bored to death by it.
Cronenberg is a genius. Maps to the Stars was messy, but it was full of fire and music, as Margot would say. Dead Ringers is one of the best movies of the 80s. Crimes of the Future looks really intriguing, and even though I'm not a fan of Spencer, I love what Kristen Stewart has been doing lately.
With next week's premiere of Alex Garland's Men, looks like we're going to have a scary summer in theaters. YES.