- Directed by David Cronenberg
- Written by David Cronenberg
- Stars Virgo Mortensen, Lihi Kornowski, Lea Deydoux, Scott Speedman, Kristen Stewart
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 47 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCAnQIs_kAs
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was weird and wonderful, taking body horror to a whole new level. The direction is brilliant. The script is intriguing. The soundtrack is amazing. The actors are all great in their roles. The Horror Guys wish they had three thumbs each to give this a rating. In the world of this movie, things like three thumbs would actually be a possibility.
Also note, it’s probably best to go into this one unspoiled, and we both strongly recommend the film. Unless something major comes out in the next month, Brian’s leaning toward this one for #1 of the year.
Synopsis
A boy and his mother, Djuna, live on the beach in a really dirty old house. The boy eats the plastic trash can as his mother watches. A little later, the mother smothers the boy with a pillow. Afterward, she gets a phone call and tells the person on the other end to come and pick up Lang’s son’s corpse.
It doesn’t take long for Lang to arrive, and he quickly finds his son’s lifeless body in bed.
We cut to a strangely shaped object suspended in the air with tubes. It moves as if it is alive somehow, and the tubes are fleshy. Caprice walks in and opens the window for it. Inside the thing lies Saul, who is connected to the weird cradle device. “I think this bed needs new software. It’s not anticipating my pain anymore.” There is a new hormone in your bloodstream, Caprice explains to him. There’s something medically wrong with Saul, but they’re treating him with technology. He’s growing a brand new organ, never before seen.
Later, Saul sits in a living massage chair that helps him eat, and then they go outside for a walk. They go to the organ registry and meet Wippet and Timlin. Human bodies are changing, and new organs must be registered for security reasons. They are concerned that human evolution is going wrong and is too out of control. For example, now that pain has disappeared from humanity, no one takes care of themselves anymore. Saul has been getting his new organs removed regularly, but not everyone who grows them does. Saul and Caprice remove them as part of performance art.
They stick viewing tubes into Saul’s body and look at it; they say it’s beautiful. They “tattoo” new organs so that if they get passed on genetically, they can track them as they stop being human.
Berst and Router come by to adjust Saul’s pain-reliever bed for him. They’re really impressed when they find out he has a Sark automated autopsy table; Caprice uses it for her art. It’s a performance, as the machine does an autopsy on Saul, who isn’t dead. It cuts him open as the others watch from the sides. He finds it orgasmic as the little needles and problems poke at his innards. It pulls out the new organ and then seals him up.
Afterward, Timlin asks him if surgery is the new sex. She wants him to cut into her now. “An artist of the inner landscape,” Berst calls him. Even in the future, art people are pretentious! Lang is there as well, and he poisons one of the other audience members at the after party by giving him a strange looking food bar – one just like one that he ate himself during the performance.
Detective Cope questions Wippet and Timlin about Saul. He doesn’t believe that new organs and growths can be considered art. They try to convince him of the whole thing, but he doesn’t get it, and it’s just a little twisted. Saul probably wills these new organs to grow.
Caprice says the growths are accelerating, and Saul shrugs it off saying that they’ll just have to start cutting faster.
We cut to Klinek, a man with ears on top of his head and all over his body, getting his eyes and mouth stitched shut. He’s literally all ears as he dances for an audience. A critic doesn’t care for all the ears, but she likes the dance.
Lang comes to Saul and asks if he could do a live autopsy on his dead son as a performance. Saul likes the idea, but isn’t sure about the legality.
Saul and Caprice lay together in the autopsy chair and let it cut them repeatedly. Better than sex! Cope comes to see Saul and says he’s been very prolific. They talk about Caprice being in the dark about Saul being an undercover stoolie. Saul gives Cope information about a Dr. Nasatir who might be trouble. He also asks about Djuna, who is in custody for murdering her son. Saul wants to see her.
Saul goes to see Dr. Nasatir. He wants to install a Riplock, basically a big zipper, in Saul’s abdomen. He mentions an upcoming “Inner beauty pageant.” He’s going to try for “Best original organ,” so he gets the zipper device installed.
Saul talks to Djuna in prison. She killed her son Brecken because he ate plastic; he had organs that made him eat plastic and synthetic stuff. He could digest it. She blames Lang for “inventing” his son. She says Lang probably has the body; the police never got it.
We see that Lang is part of making large numbers of the weird food bars, the same thing that poisoned the man at the party. There are a number of people working together on the project.
Caprice hosts a party for the surgically inclined, and it looks like a fun group of people, albeit they’re a little messy. Afterward, Caprice gets bumps installed in her forehead. She also decides she wants to do the Brecken autopsy for the show. Saul doesn’t want to get his latest organ removed right away; he wants to wait for it a little.
Wippet shows Saul his safe room, where they archive their more “provocative material.” Wippet’s also the guy who runs the inner beauty pageant. Timlin pulls Saul aside afterward; she’s worried about Wippet. She’s sexually obsessed with Saul. Clearly, Saul is weirded out by both of them at this point. Saul asks Timlin about organs that can digest plastic.
Saul and Caprice go to see Lang, who has his dead son in a meat freezer in his living room. Lang offers Saul one of his food bars, but Saul doesn’t bite. Lang and Saul have eating problems, as did little Brecken; Lang says he should let his body lead where it wants to go.
Detective Cope wants Lang and his “group of freaks,” so he tells Saul to go ahead with the Brecken show. Cope says that the food bars Lang has are poison to normal people, but Lang and his people eat them all the time; they are evolving away from the human path.
Berst and Router show up at Dr. Nasatir’ s place to work on his massage eating chair. He doesn’t survive the experience.
Lang reveals everything to Saul and Caprice; they want to evolve and start feeding on humanity’s industrial waste. They thrive on plastic. Brecken hadn’t had surgery, but he got the ability genetically. His son was supposed to be a sort of low-key messiah for the movement.
It’s time for the Brecken show. Most of the characters come to watch. They cut inside and find the organs are all tattooed— Wippet looks shocked and leaves. So does much of the audience, they are clearly appalled at the tainted performance. The organs weren’t beautiful, they were horrifying. Outside, Berst and Router drill Lang’s skull full of holes and kill him.
Saul meets Cope again that night. Cope tells him that Brecken really was born with his mutation, but they tattooed the organs to make it look like he’d had the same operation that Lang had. The two of them pieced together what happened and who did what. Now Lang is a martyr, which is just what the cause needs, Saul realizes.
Saul continues having trouble eating real food, and he’s clearly feeling miserable in his feeding chair, so Caprice hands him one of Lang’s plastic bars. He bites it and smiles blissfully. Clearly that was just what his body needed.
Commentary
It’s weird right from the get-go. The bio-mechanical world is really interesting, and the whole thing is an exploration of surgery becoming too common and normalized. H.R. Geiger would love these machines. “Accelerated Evolution Syndrome” sounds pretty cool.
There’s body horror, and then there’s body horror, and then there’s David Cronenberg, making it an art form. This may be the sexiest movie I’ve ever seen that didn’t actually have any sex in it. Well, at least not what normal people would call sex.
We both loved the soundtrack and had it playing for several days after watching the film, which is unusual for us.
The first half hour had me ready to call it number one of the year. The soundtrack alone is awesome. An hour into it, I was still intrigued. It almost lost me with the Brecken autopsy, as it wasn’t quite clear what happened, but it was soon explained by the detective. Yeah, this one was a major winner for me!