‘Crimes of the Future’ Film Review: David Cronenberg Plays the Hits, But Always With Style

Clayton Davis David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future” opened for general audiences this weekend without exactly lighting up the box office, which no one expected it to do.The filmography of Cronenberg has been one that has brought unadulterated respect from cinephiles, while never having the populist appeal to breakout into huge commercial translations or awards attention. While it’s never too late to become an Oscar darling (i.e., Christopher Plummer nabbing his three career Oscar noms, and win, after the age of 80), unless the King of Body Horror is going to make a drastic switch in style and genre, it would be criminal for him to have no industry acknowledgment as a prolific auteur.

David Cronenberg’s new film “Crimes Of The Future” asks its audience to go on quite a journey to the dystopian future. The film’s most quotable line, “surgery is the new sex,” only scratches the surface.

Top Gun: Maverick.” Can’t blame them. Cronenberg’s warped vision of what’s to come makes the technological apocalypse of “Terminator” look like a Build-A-Bear Workshop. The human body, we learn, has chaotically evolved and begun growing invasive, non-functioning organs.

The summer of Scott Speedman is incoming. Fans of the “Felicity” star will get to see a new side of the actor across two indie films that will feel like a distinct change of pace for those familiar with his studio roles in films like the “Underworld” series or “The Vow” – or even recent television roles like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “You.” Speedman makes a brief but scene-stealing appearance as a porn star in Lena Dunham’s upcoming film “Sharp Stick.” There are so many elements to discuss from that film, and the fact that his indelible Vance LeRoy is one of the main talking points serves as a testament to just how effective his characterization is.

The stars of Crimes Of The Future gather up for the premiere of the film at Walter Reade Theater on Thursday (June 2) in New York City.

World of Reel that it was indeed Stewart’s “Twilight” costar who first introduced them.Pattinson, 36, starred in two of Cronenberg’s movies — the 2012 thriller “Cosmopolis” and 2014’s “Maps to the Stars.”“It was Robert who actually introduced me to Kristen. They have developed beautifully, separately, as actors,” the Canadian filmmaker said.

After the “Twilight” movie series culminated in November 2012 with “Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” co-stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson worked hard to leave their teen-romance roles behind. And they’ve been highly successful at it for the past ten years.

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson.The iconic director, who recently worked with Kristen Stewart on Crimes of the Future and had previously cast Robert Pattinson in Cosmopolis, has opened up about working with both actors together.“It was Robert who actually introduced me to Kristen,” Cronenberg told World of Reel.“They have developed beautifully, separately, as actors. Making arthouse movies and successfully carrying that off. Kristen and I had a great time and Rob and I had a great time.”On both Twilight actors and a potential forthcoming project, Cronenberg added: “For me, yeah, I can definitely think of a movie, or idea, that would be great to have them both together.“I don’t want to get into it because it wouldn’t be my next movie, however, it might be problematic since fans might expect a certain kind of relationship and that would get in the way of creating new characters for them.

David Cronenberg’s latest deep dive into body horror, “Crimes Of The Future,” had its world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this week (read our review here). And it looks like the Canadian auteur’s first film since 2014’s “Maps To The Stars” is another extreme offering.

As women in the United States are seeing their rights to safe abortions, access to reproductive health services, and contraceptives slowly being stripped away by red state governors, a recent leak revealed the conservative majority Supreme Court may strike down Roe vs. Wade, ending legal abortion.

sickened by horrific scenes in “Crimes of the Future” reportedly walked out of the premiere at Cannes Film Festival on Monday.The film — starring Kristen Stewart, Léa Seydoux and Viggo Mortensen — is filled with scenes of child autopsies, bloody intestines, body mutations and people orgasming while licking open wounds.  The majority of the exits reportedly occurred within the first five minutes of the film but a specifically grotesque scene of Seydoux licking an open wound sent others out the door further along in the film. Both Variety and the Daily Mail reported walkouts, but Entertainment Weekly claimed there were none.New York Times journalist Kyle Buchanan tweeted from the theatre that he counted 15 people who walked out of the cinema during the screening due to “notably gross plot developments.” Despite being too much for some, the movie directed by David Cronenberg received a seven-minute standing ovation from the remaining audience members at the end.

Kristen Stewart starts her day with the 2022 Cannes Film Festival photo call for her film Crimes of the Future on Tuesday (May 24) in Cannes, France.

At a press conference for his new film “Crimes of the Future” at the Cannes Film Festival, Canadian director David Cronenberg was asked about the film’s politics and the abortion debate in America.

In David Cronenberg’s latest genre twister, Crimes of the Future, Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux plays partners who are performance artists, engrossed in performing surgery (largely on the former) for public nightclub spectacle. They’re enthralled with the freedom they can take on each other’s bodies. All of this in a governing society that’s not too fond of it.

Kristen Stewart just gave us another great red carpet moment!

David Cronenberg has unfinished business with the future, which is tricky, seeing as it already constitutes a significant slice of his past. His new film — titled “Crimes of the Future,” as in committed by rather than during that span of time — finds the master on the other side of his extended sojourn in high-minded literary adaptation, biopic quasi-prestige, and Tinseltown satire, back to playing the body-horror hits on which he made his name.

Just when his fans may have figured that David Cronenberg had called it a career (he’s now 79 and hadn’t made a feature since the misfired Maps to the Stars in 2014), along comes a film that only the Canadian maestro of the perverse could have created.

There’s a lot of weird fetishes in this world, which we won’t go into, but for David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, the new sex is surgery.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticMost filmmakers who want to unsettle you in a horror movie will reach for a familiar set of tools: slashers, demons, shock cuts, soundtracks that go boom! in the night. But in “Crimes of the Future,” the writer-director David Cronenberg is out to provoke and disturb us with something far more traumatic than mere monsters.Am I talking about the fact that in the distant future where the film is set, human beings grow mysterious new organs in their bodies? Or that having those organs removed through surgery has become, for a creepy rebel aesthete named Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), a species of performance art? Or that people no longer experience physical pain, and will therefore stand in the street late at night cutting each other for cheap thrills, as if they were shooting heroin in a back alley? Or that surgery itself, as someone puts it, has become “the new sex”? If you see “Crimes of the Future,” you’ll witness all of these outrages, and a few more besides.

Body horror king David Cronenberg is back with his erotic sci-fi thriller “Crimes of The Future.” The next screens at the Cannes Film Festival soon and NEON releases it domestically on June 8. And while Cronenberg gets a lot of credit for his own work that made it on the big screen, there are a handful of popular sci-fi projects that Cronenberg seemingly had a direct/indirect hand in helping develop–especially their body horror elements.