David Cronenberg's
EXISTENZ
dvd review
This is one of the hardest movies ever for me to review without spoiling too much and to describe what its about. I know there are a lot of Cronenberg fans out there also but to me this is my personal favorite of his. Something about this movie is just plain cool without the typical slick Hollywood visuals thats usually associated with "cool" movies. It came out the same year as the matrix so it was unfairly compared to that movie. Some themes are similiar and both have a reality and an alternate reality that characters go in and out of. This is also the earliest movie i remember seeing Sarah Polley in, and was before Jude Law gained mass popularity he now has. Jennifer Jason Leigh is pretty hot in the movie but still looking like a poor mans Elizabeth Shue.
Jennifer plays Allegra Geller who is known as the greatest virtual reality game designer in the world. The game consists of a living pod that attaches to a bio-port in the back of your spine. You close your eyes and rub the pod then you become transported in a virtual reality world. So the movie starts with a gathering at a church and there is a focus group that is going to try out her newest game. There is an assasination attempt and she flees with Jude Laws character , Ted Pikul who is now acting as her bodyguard. At this point it becomes a mystery as to why the assasination attempt and who made the attempt. Was it a riving gaming company that she refused to work for or is it an underground coalition thats against virtual reality gaming as a whole? Jude Law finally plugs into the game with her and they play the game and try to unravel the mystery of whats happening. By the end of the movie is hard to distinguish whats real and what is part of this new game. The movie does a great job of making you guess till the very end.
There are many cool moments in the movie such as an appearance by Willem Dafoe who puts the bioport into Jude directly into his spine. There is a deformed cgi bug creature that keeps popping up and also a gun made of bones and shoots out human teeth.
If you've never seen it and at all a fan of Cronenberg or sci fi then it comes highly recommended.
Heres the trailer