23 years after his last experiment with body horror in 1999’s eXistenZ, David Cronenberg has finally returned to the corporeal examinations that made him an iconic director with Crimes of the Future. Cronenberg has always been fascinated by the possibilities of the body, whether in his more overtly appalling films like Videodrome, Crash, and The Fly, and even his more toned down films of the last two decades, like A History of Violence and Cosmopolis have had their moments of shock when it comes to what can be done to one’s anatomy.

Cronenberg has stated that he wrote Crimes of the Future 20 years ago, and in the lead up to Cannes, the writer-director predicted that there would be walkouts within the first five minutes. While Cronenberg certainly has proven that he knows how to shock and disgust with his films, that era of his work seemed to be in his past, and Crimes of the Future certainly feels derivative of Cronenberg’s earlier work. From Kristen Stewart’s Timlin matter-of-factly stating that “surgery is the new sex,” to beds and chairs that look like they were made of human flesh and bone, Cronenberg seems back in his wheelhouse for the first time in a quarter-century. But for a director whose films have always been about human evolution, and with a filmography that has shown that Cronenberg has probably evolved past the sort of blunt body horror that we’ve seen in the past, do we really need Cronenberg to go backward like this?

Cronenberg builds an intriguing world seemingly heading towards the next step of evolution, but also decaying and ignored. Amongst the strange abnormalities becoming more commonplace, humans have evolved past pain. In this shift, groups of performance artists whose bodies and this new evolution have helped inspire their work have arisen. One of the most enigmatic of these new types of artists is Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), who due to “Accelerated Evolution Syndrome,” is able to grow strange new organs in his body. As part of their performances, his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux) removes these extra organs in their own operating theater.

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Image via Neon

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With Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg is falling back on some of his favorite topics that he’s explored with more depth and power in the past. This intersection of sex, violence, and art was also investigated with Crash, the obsession with surgery in Dead Ringers, and the convergence of technology and human evolution together with Videodrome. That’s not to say that filmmakers—especially ones as iconic as Cronenberg—shouldn’t have their favorite topics they can revisit and return to over the course of their careers, but in the case of Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg can often feel like a greatest hits package of the director’s work.

Certainly, Cronenberg has a sense of humor about the story he’s telling. For example, when Saul goes to visit another artist, one who has covered their body in ears and dances around for a large audience, he calls this shocking display “escapist propaganda.” It’s easy to see Cronenberg going to see the disturbing films of his imitators and scoffing at the mainstream mentality of such stories. But even with Stewart’s fiddly performance as Timlin, a character who becomes obsessed with the work of Saul and Caprice to a point that she becomes, and several scenes of Mortensen struggling to eat in a constantly-shifting chair made out of what looks to be human bones, Crimes of the Future is full of a dry wit amongst all the orgasmic slicing and dicing.

But amongst this return to his glory days of uncomfortable filmmaking, Crimes of the Future is packed with ideas that Cronenberg doesn’t quite know what to do with, and stories that don’t have anywhere to go. Primary of these loose threads is Scott Speedman’s Lang Dotrice, a leader of a new fringe group that has sprung up in this new world who are attempting their own type of evolution. There’s also Welket Bungué’s Detective Cope, who works with Saul to find out more information about Lang’s group, and the question of how far is too far when it comes to art, as Lang wants Saul and Caprice to perform an autopsy on his son in their theater. Cronenberg is clearly more interested in asking questions about this possible future than actually answering them, but at a certain point, Crimes of the Future becomes too overwhelmed by its ambitious and inquisitive nature.

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Image via Neon

And while Cronenberg is invested in asking questions about our evolution, if we’re heading down a path of evolution gone wrong and if we’re becoming naturally unnatural, he asks these in lieu of exploring the captivating world that he’s built around these characters. Cronenberg frequently hints at the larger world of which we only get slight glimpses, and while Cronenberg wants to look at where evolution has brought us, he’s not nearly as invested in discussing how evolution brought us to this point—which is arguably the more interesting aspect of this story.

But much like Cronenberg’s last film, 2014’s Maps to the Stars, Crimes of the Future has difficulty nailing the tone of this story as well, with performances that often become too wooden and stiff. Seydoux comes the closest to finding the perfect mixture that the film requires, and Cronenberg’s recent favorite Mortensen is solid in a role that requires him to be in a constant state of ailing throughout the film. Yet still, Crimes of the Future often struggles—especially when exploring the minutiae and details of this current world—to not feel too rigid throughout.

While it’s certainly interesting to see Cronenberg return to the world of body horror all these years later, Crimes of the Future doesn’t give many reasons why this return was needed. Cronenberg certainly still knows how to create arresting imagery and craft stories that can make the audience squirm, but the story that isn’t being told with Crimes of the Future is far more interesting than the one he has decided to focus on, which often feels like regurgitating concepts he’s already handled before. But even compared to films like last year’s Titane and even Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor, Crimes of the Future is remarkably tame and less remarkable in its ambitions. It’s great to see a master of body horror return to the style of filmmaking that made him an icon, but Crimes of the Future shows that maybe Cronenberg has evolved past this type of film.

Rating: C+

Crimes of the Future is in theaters now.