Dead-on for Cronenberg fans though the mutant reptile and amphibian factory might be a tad(pole) too much for the squeamish at heart.
eXistenZ
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Canada, United Kingdom, France · 1999
Rated R · 1h 37m
Director David Cronenberg
Starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Eccleston, Jude Law, Ian Holm
Genre Action, Thriller, Science Fiction, Horror
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Embarking on a strange adventure where reality and the virtual are inextricably linked, a young bodyguard, Ted Pikul, must play an enigmatic and bodily-intrusive video game called ExistenZ in order to determine whether or not the only known copy in the world has been damaged by assassins.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The performances are so terrible that it's hard to know whether Cronenberg wants to signal that much of what we're seeing isn't "real" or he has just forgotten how to write for hemoglobular flesh vessels--i.e., human beings.
The New York Times by Elvis Mitchell
Its name, the film's title, is pronounced "eggs is tense" and meant to have a whiff of the philosophical, even if its intellectual ambition seems mostly limited to spelling affectations.
eXistenZ gives us Cronenberg at his wittiest, and Leigh at her most vulnerable and fascinating.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Because of the potential of the idea and Cronenberg's reputation as a film maker, it's a real disappointment to watch eXistenZ fall apart the way it does.
Like the virtual game he plays on us, the film is weird, it's addictive, and Lord, it's alive!
This is not light-hearted entertainment. Be prepared to think. Uncle Dave will take you someplace new.
Washington Post by Stephen Hunter
Crazy? Crazy is too mild a word by far to describe the twisted worm at play inside the skull of the Canadian director David Cronenberg -- And that craziness is given full vent in the vomitorium called eXistenZ.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold
Cronenberg is one of the cinema's true originals, and a trip to his spooky world is always a harrowing, thought-provoking experience.
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