Crimes of the Future (2022)

So much about Crimes of the Future got me thinking about the past. It is the second film Cronenberg has made with this title but it has nothing to do with the previous film and intentionally evokes the infamously celebrated films of the director's past, everything from Naked Lunch and Crash to The Fly and Dead Ringers. It is set in a dystopian future that feels like a wasteland, wreckage everywhere, literally and figuratively, a time when the best is all behind it. It almost feels like Cronenberg is looking less to the future and more over his shoulder. 

Despite all the "body horror" elements Crimes of the Future is at its heart a noir mystery. There is a Registry Office that feels right out of a 50s detective story and there is even a character deep undercover who gets sucked into the world he is investigating. The film's mystery focuses on the tension between a mysterious movement and the state attempting to crack down on it, and we are lost between those poles often not knowing who we are to be rooting for. It's all incredibly uncomfortable, like we would expect a Cronenberg film to be, but not necessarily for the gross out aspects of the story, which are deeply uncomfortable but don't live up to the hype, but also for our confusion as to how to react. 

The film's shock value is loaded and in a way numbs us to what we are seeing. The film's story is exploring the passion to feel something, anything, and as the audience we are also left struggling to feel. The characters are remote, their story arcs rather alien; it all remains hard to grasp in a way that denies us the sort of emotional satisfaction we often seek out in cinema. In this story pain has been vanquished (for better or for worse) and we as the audience are also denied the ability to feel too much. From Cronenberg's attempts to gross us out to his deliberately opaque characters, Crimes of the Future dulls the pain. The shocking scenes are there to jolt us into an emotional response. Cronenberg does translate his world into his audience's experience and it isn't always pleasant but it also doesn't always produce much emotion.

Cronenberg's script sometimes feels stiff and awkward as characters feel like they are reciting things instead of actually speaking. There is a lot of dialogue exposition making many conversations feel less like, well conversations, and more like a script. The film drags a bit. The film's approach is less to create a real world and more to give us something to sit with. That's fine but also takes something from the experience. I don't think I felt much of anything while I watched it. I also don't think it's state vs. rebel plot line inspired much reflection in me. In the end I left feeling rather numb.

But the most impact Crimes of the Future had on me is how much it felt like revisiting the past, past Cronenberg films, past film making genres and tropes. Little felt new and innovative. 

Crimes of the Future

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart, Don McKellar, Scott Speedman

Writer/Director: David Cronenberg