It’s no secret that the creative mind of David Cronenberg is a place where strangeness meets poignancy. His earlier works like The Fly and Shivers set the foundation for modern body horror tales, combining the grotesque with psychological examinations for interesting commentary about humanity. Decades later, he’s returning to those horrific (and dazzling) roots with Crimes of the Future and, based on the trailer, Cronenberg hasn’t lost his touch.
Before we get into the trailer, I must note something. There is a lesser-known film by David Cronenberg from 1970 with the exact same name. His first Crimes of the Future is a rather disturbing foray into a world where the world’s population of women die from a cosmetics-fueled plague. The men in the film are terrible and it nearly goes down a very dark road with a young girl before turning down…another dark road. But this 2022 film is thankfully not a remake in any form. I could be wrong, but I don’t think anything about that first Crimes of the Future would go over well. Here’s the synopsis for the new film:
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.
We see a small snippet of this play out in the Crimes of the Future trailer. We hear a voiceover that says it is time to stop seeing and speaking and instead listen. There are people in strange organ pods and also a human with their eyes and mouths sewed together. Oh, dear.
Crimes of the Future‘s Redband trailer has also now been released. And it involves more stomach-churning medication and more slicing and dicing than even our previous look.
What is taking it too far when it comes to body modifications for survival? And at what point do we just accept that our time as humanity is done and let go? Maybe these questions and more will get answers when the film drops. Right now, the Neon film is set for a Cannes debut in May with an anticipated June 2022 release in the US. So we won’t have to wait long to see what’s going on in this twisted world.
