As the director himself predicted, not everybody has the stomach for David Cronenberg’s return to the body horror genre.
Director David Cronenberg is currently screening his vaunted return to the body horror genre at Cannes and as he predicted, it isn’t going to be a film for everybody. IGN is reporting that screenings of Crimes Of The Future, which stars Kristen Stewart and Viggo Mortensen, are seeing early walkouts, something the filmmaker suggested a couple of weeks ago in an interview with Deadline.
“There are some very strong scenes. I mean, I’m sure that we will have walkouts within the first five minutes of the movie. I’m sure of that. Some people who have seen the film have said that they think the last 20 minutes will be very hard on people, and that there’ll be a lot of walkouts”, he had said.
The film marks the director’s return to body horror, a genre with which he is synonymous following cult films from the 1970s and 1980s such as The Fly and Shivers. Cronenberg actually wrote the film back in this period and has returned to the script decades later, as he was never able to get it made at the time.
Set ‘in the near future, the human species is adapting to a synthetic environment and the body undergoes new transformations and mutations. With his partner Caprice (Lea Seydoux), celebrity performance artist Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances.’
Still, despite the walkouts, the premiere got a huge ovation, something Cronenberg hasn’t always managed (or perhaps even wanted) to achieve. The divisive Crash was booed by the festival audience when it premiered there in 1996, so hopefully Cronenberg is enjoying the positive festival reception to his latest film, which will go on general release in early June.
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