Body horror movies are not for everyone, but in the last few years they have had a renaissance along with the entire horror genre. For many, the body horror subgenre of films really exploded in the 1980s with movies like Videodrome and The Fly testing the stomachs of audiences with grotesque visuals that defied nature and often ended in grizzly violence and gore. Both of those movies, and the genre itself, had one person to thank for bringing them to screens, the master of turning stomachs, David Cronenberg. As one of the leading directors of movies guaranteed to make you squirm, Cronenberg’s work always pushed boundaries and made you question whether you really should be watching what you were seeing on screen. Although the director stepped away from body horror following the release of Existenz in 1999, he returned in 2022 with a new movie ready to test your limits in Crimes of the Future. Despite being a theatrical flop, the movie is one that is worth catching before it leaves its current streaming home.
Crimes of the Future is a return to the type of movie that Cronenberg made his name making in the first 20 years of his career. While he has steered into other genres in recent times, the movie proves that he has lost none of his edge when it comes to dividing opinions and creating horrifying worlds that no one would ever want to see become a reality. Crimes of the Future stars Viggo Mortensen as Saul Tenser, a man living in a world where humanity has been forced into “Accelerated Evolution Syndrome” thanks to climate changes and advances in biotechnology. Saul’s body has the ability to generate new organs, and his partner surgically removes them in front of live audiences as in this reality, “surgery is the new sex.”
For a long while, cinema walkouts seemed to have become a thing of the past, but with new graphically violent movie releases such as the Terrifier franchise, reports of people vomiting in cinemas and having to leave part-way through films seem to have been on the rise. Cronenberg’s return to body horror was never going to be a tame affair, and so it proved as from the first screenings there were people who just could not sit through the whole film. The intense nature of the movie, combined with being confined in a dark cinema, led to people reportedly suffering panic attacks during some of the brutal surgical sequences and leaving when they were unable to deal with some of the more graphic visuals of various body modifications that the characters had gone through to survive in the unforgiving world they lived in.
Crimes of the Future was a flop in cinemas, taking just over $4 million during its theatrical run, and it divided critics and audiences. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film scored a reasonable 79% on the Tomatometer as many hailed it as a return to form for Cronenberg after so long away from the genre he has always defined. Audiences were much more split, signaled by a 50% approval rating. The consensus around Crimes of the Future became clear to see very quickly; if you are a fan of Cronenberg then this is exactly the kind of movie you would expect, if not, then it may feel more like a “punishment of the senses” rather than entertainment. The movie is set to leave its current streaming home of Prime Video on Thursday, October 15, giving you just enough time to stream it and decide for yourself where you stand on one of the most provocative movies of the decade.
Does David Cronenberg push boundaries of taste too far in his body horror movies? Let us know in the comments.
