Crimes of the Future: Plot, Cast, and Everything Else We Know

2022-05-21 16:19:15 By : Ms. Louise Xie

David Cronenberg's latest body horror will premier at Cannes Film Festival this month. Here's what we know about Crimes of the Future so far.

Crimes of the Future is the latest film from body horror master David Cronenberg, and it promises to be everything we’ve come to expect from the Baron of Blood. Fans are excited for the film’s release, as it will be the first major motion picture from the famous auteur since 2014. While Cronenberg has gotten fairly steady acting work throughout his career, he took a break from filmmaking after directing Maps to the Stars, starring Julianne Moore and Robert Pattinson, which ended up being a flop at the box office. Now people wait to see Crimes of the Future with the apprehension of choosing a frog to dissect in science class. When we buy our ticket and pull back the skin, will we see everything we hope for?

David Cronenberg is known for his Oscar-winning work The Fly, which premiered in 1986. In it, a crazy scientist accidentally transforms a man into a human/fly hybrid when one of his experiments goes horribly wrong. He has also made films such as the 1991 adaptation of Naked Lunch, A History of Violence, and the 2012 film Cosmopolis. Although Crimes of the Future bears the same name as one of Cronenberg’s first short films from 1970, it is not a remake of that film.

Here's what we know so far.

While Crimes of the Future will be premiering at the Cannes Film Festival and then to the public in June, no one has had a look at it yet outside the trailers. At the moment, we can tell it is a surgical horror story set in the near future in which humanity is adapting to some sort of evolutionary change. In it, an artist puts on art nouveau performances in which he grows new organs and displays them to the public.

The film heavily sexualizes this new behavior, as we hear the moans and brief gasps of pleasure from the characters that feel the edge of the scalpel or probing movement of the endoscopic camera. In the Crimes of the Future trailer, we hear someone say, “Surgery is the new sex.”

The movie feels depraved and unashamed, pouring blood in front of its audience and offering up its organs like a confession and with a very different feel from Cronenberg’s old film of the same name. The 1970 film had a plot in which all sexually mature women were killed and took part in its horror from acts of depravity. Not so with this movie. But the old film did feature an artist who put on performances that exhibited his organs.

This new film appears to use that character as inspiration, choosing to create an entirely different story around that concept instead of taking anything from the old film’s plot. This new story seems to be more concerned with the sci-fi trope of man meddling in areas of science that ought not to be meddled in, a common theme of previous sci-fi movies from Cronenberg. This is a future being explored by people with unusual medical power attempting to push the boundaries of the next stage of evolution.

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The synopsis from IMDb reads, “Humans adapt to a synthetic environment, with new transformations and mutations. With his partner, Caprice, Saul Tenser, celebrity performance artist, publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances.” Which makes the movie sound as if it were some sort of horror prequel to the world of Blade Runner, in which humans are made of synthetic parts.

The cast is packed to the brim with wonderful actors. Viggo Mortensen (Lord of the Rings) plays the main character, artist Saul Tenser who suffers from “Accelerated Evolution Syndrome” and grows the new organs he uses for his performances. Mortensen is a veteran of Cronenberg films, staring in Eastern Promises and A History of Violence. Lea Seydoux (No Time to Die, Blue is the Warmest Color) plays Saul Tenser’s partner and initial love interest, who helps him perform these unholy exhibitions. And Kristen Stewart (Spencer, Twilight) enters the fray as a detective with the National Organ Registry that begins to investigate Tenser.

Don McKellar also plays an agent with the National Organ Registry and was also in eXistenZ, another Cronenberg film. Scott Speedman, who played in the Underworld films, plays Lang Daughtery. Other cast members include Tanya Beatty (Yellowstone), Denise Capezza (Bang Bang Baby), Lihi Kornowski, Nadia Litz (The People Garden), Welket Bugunue, Ephie Kantza as Adrienne Berseau, Yorgos Pirpassopoulos (Beckett) as Doctor Nasatir, and Jason Bitter (Post Cards from the End of the World) as Tarr.

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The movie promises to be everything we’ve heard from the legend that Cronenberg has become. And he’s pulled no punches with production as apparently, he expects mass walkouts at the movie’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this month. While there is no definite release date set for the film, it is said to be coming out in June of this year, which is only another two weeks away. Depending on how the film does at Cannes, it won’t be long to wait for the auteur’s next work, and we’ll see the clean Hollywood elite’s first reactions to Cronenberg's beautiful and disgusting world.

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