After eight years away from the feature film director’s chair, renowned filmmaker David Cronenberg is making a comeback with Crimes of the Future, a sci-fi movie that has been 20 years in the making. The project is featured in the official competition of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and is slated to premiere in June. In the futuristic story, humans have evolved to the point of their bodies adapting to realities and problems we ourselves created – but how does that change the perspective of human existence?
If this sounds way too philosophical, just take a look at the trailer for Crimes of the Future, and you’ll see that Cronenberg is diving deep into the rabbit hole of big questions in life. More than that, the director is clearly returning to his body horror roots, with some footage that is certain to make us cringe as we watch it. So, of course, it looks like David Cronenberg at his best.
In addition, the trailer reveals that Cronenberg – who also penned the script – has pulled out all the stops to make Crimes of the Future look as distant from our present reality as possible. In the space of a single minute, we see medical procedures being performed inside a sarcophagus-like structure, individuals with body organs in positions they shouldn’t be, abstract gooey stuff (there’s no better way to describe it), and people having a snack that consists of… plastic. And that’s just the trailer!
Crimes of the Future is a return to form of Cronenberg. In the last few years, the director has done some powerful, philosophical and acclaimed films like A History of Violence and Cosmopolis, but some fans missed the particular style Cronenberg became known for in modern classics like The Fly and Videodrome.
In an official statement, the director himself dissected the ideas of the film, teased fans of his work and revealed what sorts of questions he helps to put in people’s minds with the story:
"‘Crimes of the Future’ is a meditation on human evolution. Specifically - the ways in which we have had to take control of the process because we have created such powerful environments that did not exist previously. [The movie] is an evolution of things I have done before. Fans will see key references to other scenes and moments from my other films. That’s a continuity of my understanding of technology as connected to the human body. Technology is always an extension of the human body, even when it seems to be very mechanical and non-human. A fist becomes enhanced by a club or a stone that you throw - but ultimately, that club or stone is an extension of some potency that the human body already has. At this critical junction in human history, one wonders: Can the human body evolve to solve problems we have created? Can the human body evolve a process to digest plastics and artificial materials not only as part of a solution to the climate crisis, but also, to grow, thrive, and survive?"
The star-studded cast features Viggo Mortensen (Green Book), Kristen Stewart (Spencer), Léa Seydoux (No Time to Die), Scott Speedman (Underworld), Welket Bungué (Berlin Alexanderplatz), and Don McKellar (Blindness).
Check out the official synopsis here:
As the human species adapts to a synthetic environment, the body undergoes new transformations and mutations. With his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux), Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), celebrity performance artist, publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances. Timlin (Kristen Stewart), an investigator from the National Organ Registry, obsessively tracks their movements, which is when a mysterious group is revealed… Their mission – to use Saul’s notoriety to shed light on the next phase of human evolution.
Crimes of the Future will have an early premiere in this year’s Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off on May 17. After that, the movie is set to premiere wide in theaters in June. A specific date is yet to be announced by Neon.
You can check out the poster and trailer below:
