Written by Andreas Babiolakis

Hallelujah! The great David Cronenberg has returned! Eight years after his last film Maps to the Stars, the Canadian legend — who previously cautioned that he was highly considering retirement because of the nonsenses of the film industry and its financial protocols — is back with Crimes of the Future, which was likely the most anticipated film of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival (Crimes would lose to Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness for the Palme d’Or). Now that the dust has settled and Crimes has been out for a few days, it is safe to say that I welcome Cronenberg back whenever he has a new film, but, having said that, this is a film of fanfare and not much more. That’s because the auteur has returned to his signature body horror roots: something he hasn’t touched since the 90s. The film feels like Cronenberg placing his toes into the pool of the genre (that he is unquestionably the king of) to see how it feels again. It isn’t quite the full-on dive that I was hoping for.

The line between self-sacrifice and art is made into a literal display in Crimes of the Future, with performance icon Saul Tenser (played by Viggo Mortensen) and his lover and assistant, Caprice (Léa Seydoux), pushing the boundaries of how the human body can be manipulated. This is a dystopian future where our bodies don’t function in the ways that they used to; it’s as if the hideousness of our transmogrifications has rendered us beautiful in the eyes of society once more, and we have come full circle with our understandings of our own existences. The film feels a little bit like an amalgamation of other Cronenberg classics, particularly the devolution of ourselves in the name of entertainment (Videodrome) or the analyses of our perverted fetishization of the objectified body in the most extreme ways (Crash). Unlike Videodrome, nothing truly gets stated when it comes to our perceptions of our selves. Unlike Crash, I didn’t feel repulsed and sick as much as I felt almost too distanced from Crimes, like I wasn’t affected in this way whatsoever. Crimes feels like a return for Cronenberg, but a very hollow one that can muster his signature tropes but not his beautifully complex thought patterns and pure artistry.

Having said all of this, I still found Crimes of the Future interesting enough because Cronenberg’s twisted visions will always take us to new places, even if we don’t go as far as we would like. Besides, a director like Cronenberg should always be hired as a benchmark for how far practical special effects can go in each era, as Crimes remains a fascinating exhibition of makeup and gore excellence that may have you squirming in your seat. Each performer gives their all underneath Cronenberg’s direction, and I don’t know if this acting is the finest of any of the cast’s respective careers, but you get some much-needed vulnerability that pumps a bit of life and fear into this unorthodox prophecy. If you have yet to see a film by Cronenberg and you want to start checking his films out, there are a number of films that are worth a shot: his inexplicably beautiful The Fly, his uncomfortable Dead Ringers, his underrated crime films Eastern Promises and A History of Violence, and the aforementioned Crash and Videodrome.

Once you’re familiar enough with Cronenberg, Crimes of the Future will be a good watch. It’s not too thought provoking, but it is peculiar enough. It doesn’t go to the extreme with its horrors, but Cronenberg has yet to exhaust an old idea. There’s enough of the director’s demented curiosity throughout the film that it feels great to have him back. I do hope that his next project — should there be one (an apparent reunion with his collaborators Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson post Twilight, if Cronenberg had his druthers) — goes even further. By 2022, Crimes of the Future isn’t startling or different enough, although it does fit right in. As a return, it does its job nicely, as if we have picked up a best-of compilation that played only the hits. I want those deep cuts (a double entendre I completely intended). I want to see David Cronenberg make us feel repulsed and have us questioning our own minds again in the 2020’s. We need to really let off some steam within horror films. We need to go beyond the point of no return. Take us there, David Cronenberg.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.