Crimes of the Future: NZIFF Review

If Crimes of the Future is about anything it's a sign that Cronenberg has stayed true to his oeuvre of body horror, people probing into human bodies and general oddness.

On all fronts Crimes proves to be a film that doesn't deserve its enfant terrible reputation, borne into life by Cannes walkouts and standing ovations.

If anything it's a muted,  muddled mess about the collision of two performance artists, a grieving father looking for change, a detective trying to crack a terror cell and a pair of drill wielding assassins. Throw in some awkwardly scripted dialogue and unintentional laughs and you have a film that's as muddied as it is technically impressive.

Set in a world that's somewhat post-apocalyptic, and a world without pain, Viggo Mortensen stars as Saul Tenser, a man who's able to experience pain where others can't and who seemingly can grow organs at will. Along with his performance partner, Caprice (Lea Seydoux), Tenser puts on shows where his organs are extracted in a live forum.

However, things are complicated as Tenser's pain increases, a child is murdered and a splinter eco-group emerges aimed at changing human evolution for good.

Cronenberg aims to throw in messages about climate change, chemical waste and plastic pollution in his story, but in truth, they're so openly espoused that subtlety is not really his thing. But in true Cronenberg style, there's some machine eroticism, some sensuality in exchanges, and a bit of blood and gore thrown in for good measure.

Yet all together, Crimes of the Future feels muted, its messages nothing more than half-written and its execution feeling woefully undercooked.

As a black-robed wheezing figure, Mortensen looks like a character from a game as he flits through the shadows and encounters - he's solid enough to watch, but aside from Caprice, no one else in the film feels written strongly enough to latch on to.

It's a shame as there are weighty topics here for consideration - infanticide, global destruction, waste - they're all worthy of inclusion and execution. But you can't shake the feeling watching Crimes of the Future that this feels like a script that was written decades ago and was prescient then, yet somehow feels underwhelming now.