Canadian director David Cronenberg has an earlier thriller, “eXistenZ”,
1999, from (TWC) Dimension Films and Alliance Atlantis, that provides another
exercise in migration among different states of being and that questions our
normal sense of identity and reality.
At some point in the future, people have ports for “bio-implants”
into their lower spines, physically rather like USB ports on computers (which
did not exist yet in 1999). Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) has designed
a game, “eXistenZ”, and at a market test session (conducted with security,
rather like the opening of “Sound of My Voice”, below) she is shot by a gamer
with a bizarre “organic weapon”.
She goes on the lam with a company trainee Ted Pikul (Jude
Law), who says he is sensitive about his both and being “penetrated”. (He remains well zipped up during the
film.) But he accepts the bio-game-port
connection, and soon the pair are on an adventure where they cannot tell what
is inside and outside the game. The plot
device reminds one of “going inside the website” in a 2002 movie “Fear Dot Com”.
There’s no thimble here, like in “Inception”, to tell you if
you’re back to “reality”.
The game components involve various pulpous masses (as game
ports) that look like living things and give Cronenberg a chance to wield his
talent for showing the demons from our dreams.
In a scene in a Chinese restaurant, Ted reconstructs the “organic weapon”
from the food.
The script has some great lines, like:
“I like your script. I want to be in it.”
“Nobody physically skis anymore. You know that.”
“I feel very worried about my body. I’m vulnerable,
disembodied”. (There was a horror film
about voodoo called “The Disembodied” in 1957, from Allied Artists, that used
to play on a Saturday night “Chiller” program.)
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