If you’re in the mood to be thoroughly nauseated on this fine Thursday, I suggest you take a gander at the teaser trailer for David Cronenberg’s latest sci-fi horror film, Crimes of the Future. The preview features imagery that ranges from vaguely creepy to straight-up disturbing; of the clip’s mere 56 seconds, I averted my eyes for more than 30.
Crimes of the Future boasts an impressive call sheet—Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, and Kristen Stewart are the film’s leads. Mortensen plays Saul Tenser, an avant-garde celebrity performance artist who publicly displays the metamorphosis of his organs as his body adapts to a synthetic environment. In simpler terms, he’s basically growing freaky new organs and showing them to audiences. Seydoux is his partner, Caprice, and Stewart is Timlin, an investigator from the National Organ Registry. Ultimately, a plot is uncovered with the goal of using Saul to showcase the next phase of human evolution.
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In the trailer, a narrator repeats the phrase, “It is time to stop seeing. It is time to stop speaking. It is time to listen.” It’s difficult to make sense of what is actually happening in any of the shots, but there’s a guy with ears on top of his forehead getting his eyelids and lips sewn shut, and that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the vibe of the movie.
Cronenberg is best known for films like Crash and A History of Violence. As one of the foremost originators of the body horror genre, the controversial Canadian director is returning to his roots with this new project, which marks his first film since 2014’s satirical drama Map to the Stars.
Set to premiere next month at the Cannes Film Festival, Crimes of the Future has already garnered buzz for its potential to polarize audiences. An anonymous viewer at an early test screening offered this assessment: “I cannot say much, obviously, but… this is going to create way more chaos and controversy for sure. The last 20 minutes are a very tough sit. I expect walk-outs, faintings and real panic attacks (I almost had one myself!) at [Cannes Film Festival’s] Lumière theatre. No hyperbole, I promise.”
Sounds like a blast!
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