Stimulating ‘eXistenZ’ of Games and Reality

With “eXistenZ” David Cronenberg, Canada’s master of the macabre, envisions a near-future in which virtual reality games will have become so perfected that their players may no longer be able to tell whether they’re in a game or in real life. Cronenberg is not trying for a profound cautionary tale, but a provocative entertainment that allows him free range with his unique, darkly funny and disturbing vision. The Cronenberg trademarks are here in full force, including an outrageous sexual suggestiveness in his bizarre special effects.

The film opens in an old country church, where Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the game designer supreme, is demonstrating her latest and most powerful games system, eXistenZ. No sooner has she started than she is subject to an assassination attempt by forces apparently terrified at her skill at tapping into peoples’ fears and desires.

She’s swiftly on the run with a marketing trainee, Ted Pikul (Jude Law), who works for her employer, Antenna Research. They are thrust into a series of adventures in the countryside that reveal the spiraling paranoia that Cronenberg suggests virtual reality addiction generates.

(Allegra’s predicament was inspired by an interview Cronenberg did with writer Salman Rushdie, who at the time was still under the Ayatollah’s fatwa; could a games designer, an artist in her own right, be under a similar threat, he wondered? And then what if, in flight, such a designer could be caught up in a game of her own devising?)

There are key encounters with a service station owner (Willem Dafoe), who is enlisted by Allegra in inserting into Ted a Bioport, a spinal jack that allows her to plug in an UmbyCord attached to her MetaFlesh Game-Pod, a game module with roughly the shape of a human kidney in which she has stored eXistenZ. Once Ted’s central nervous system has been tapped, he is equipped to experience the wild ride with Allegra as they continue on the lam through the forest region, with a brief visit with Allegra’s scientist mentor, Kiri Vinokur (Ian Holm), and a period of employment at a trout farm, now operating as a facility for harvesting creatures to be incorporated into the games in various ways.

Allegra and Ted encounter a tiny and whimsical yet sinister two-headed amphibian--mutation, which is another Cronenberg preoccupation. A favored weapon in this universe, all the more eerie for seeming so familiar, even homespun, is a gristle gun, created out of the body of a small mammal and designed to shoot teeth (!) instead of bullets and intended to slip by metal and synthetics detectors.

Of course, it must be kept in mind that all these incidents and more could be occurring within the game and not “reality”; the point that Cronenberg deftly makes is that fantasy can have dire real-life consequences. Caught up in your imagination you may kill for real an individual whom you see as a threat in your imagination.

These are the kind of thoughts you have after the fact, for to watch the film is like being caught up in a dream, or rather, a nightmare with its myriad menacing permutations.

Interestingly, “eXistenZ” is not heavy on action spectacle, but there is violence and gore, to be sure, and it has only a few key settings. Cronenberg instead skillfully generates an unsettling involvement and suspense by making us feel that he is playing with our minds, just as Allegra and Ted are doing that to others--and maybe themselves.

In any event, “eXistenZ” is a kind of ultimate nothing-is-as-it-seems movie and its stars contribute as much to sustaining mystery as Cronenberg himself. Jennifer Jason Leigh is an ideal Cronenberg heroine, projecting a personality that is smart, wary and capable of obsessiveness. Law, Dafoe and Holm are ideal foils for her, for they have wit and presence equal to hers.

Cronenberg films rely on exceptional contributions from his crew as well as his cast, and production designer Carol Spier has come up with one faultlessly seedy backwoods setting after another, while composer Howard Shore contributes a score that is as majestic as it is ominous, establishing the film’s acute sense of mood and atmosphere right from the start. The eminent cinematographer Peter Suschitzky creates a series of images that are as beautiful as they are unnerving while Jim Isaac’s visual and special effects are ingenious and magical.

Sci-fi fantasy/horror doesn’t get more sophisticated than “eXistenZ,” yet while the film invites speculation, it doesn’t require it. As cerebral as “eXistenZ” is, it’s nevertheless easy to go along for the ride, just for fun, as you would “Scream,” and be rewarded with the stunning kind of payoff all thrillers should deliver regardless of their level of aspiration.

* MPAA rating: R, for strong sci-fi violence and gore, and for language. Times guidelines: The film is too intense for children.

‘eXistenZ’

Jennifer Jason Leigh: Allegra Geller

Jude Law: Ted Pikul

Ian Holm: Kiri Vinokur

Willem Dafoe: Gas

A Dimension Films/Alliance Atlantis/Serendipity Point Films presentation in association with Natural Nylon. Writer-director David Cronenberg. Producers Robert Lantos, Andras Hamori, Cronenberg. Cinematographer Peter Suschitzky. Editor Ronald Sanders. Costumes Denise Cronenberg. Music Howard Shore. Visual and special effects supervisor Jim Isaac. Production designer Carol Spier. Art director Tamara Deverell. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

In general release.