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eXistenZ
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by Walt Disney Video
Sales Rank: 20037
Price: $9.99
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Director David Cronenberg's <i>eXistenZ</i> is a stew of corporate espionage, virtual reality gaming, and thriller elements, marinated in Cronenberg's favorite Crock-Pot juices of technology, physiology, and sexual metaphor. Jennifer Jason Leigh is game designer Allegra Geller, responsible for the new state-of-the-art eXistenZ game system; along with PR newbie Ted Pikul (Jude Law), they take the beta version of the game for a test drive and are immersed in a dangerous alternate reality. The game isn't quite like PlayStation, though; it's a latexy pod made from the guts of mutant amphibians and plugs via an umbilical cord directly into the user's spinal column (through a BioPort). It powers up through the player's own nervous system and taps into the subconscious; with several players it networks their brains together. Geller and Pikul's adventures in the game reality uncover more espionage and an antigaming, proreality insurrection. The game world makes it increasingly difficult to discern between reality and the game, either through the game's perspective or the human's. More accessible than <I>Crash</I>, <i>eXistenZ</i> is a complicated sci-fi opus, often confusing, and with an ending that leaves itself wide open for a sequel. Fans of Cronenberg's work will recognize his recurring themes and will eat this up. Others will find its shallow characterizations and near-incomprehensible plot twists a little tedious. <I>--Jerry Renshaw</I>
Viewer Reviews
Watch it on Cinemax at 5:00 AM on a Monday morning or buy this DVD if you want to watch this strange digest of other film concepts.
The cast seems like the A-List of 1999 who happened to be in between other studio projects and dropped in on this film to just hang out and do a movie.
First year acting school students are given improvisational assignments to convince the audience an inert object like a coffee mug or the recalcitrant professors ball point pen are a meaningful object and have to interact and portray that object as a significant story element.
Jude Law and JJLeigh seem to replicate a better acting school exercise as they carefully cultivate and protect the "Game Pods" which are organic looking cybernetic storage devices which are just latex movie props from John Carpenter and Alien movies the studio didn't want to throw away just yet.
So, they built a film around the characters who use the GamePods as a portal to a Matrix like reality where they jump in and out of multiple sub realties in a life like game without a real or even stated goal just like EverQuest that encases other mini-realities like Virtuosity until the viewer becomes more annoyed than intrigued. Later, there are the revealing true realities like the end scene of Jacobs Ladder until you realize it is another double cross.
You likely won't notice this because you'll either stop watching this film or your TV will be broken by whatever heavy object you've flung at it in an attempt to abruptly relieve yourself from this waste of time impersonating a movie.
The special effects are nonexistent beyond blood squibs under the actors shirts to simulate gun shot and there is a semi-steamy love scene with Jude Law and JJL that includes some chest fondling but none of her trademark nudity that makes her films bearable sometimes.
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eXistenZ
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