And I don't want to go to YT and watch a 20-minute video explaining to me the "deep" and philosophical themes and ideas of this movie. If a movie can't even in the tiniest way tell me itself what it's actually about, then something is wrong and I don't consider that a good movie. And I'm not talking about movies with actual mindbending plots that you have to watch or read an explanation to get the ending and the story, I'm talking about the movie that doesn't even try to hint at what it actually wants to say. So if I didn't enjoy the story, if I didn't enjoy the way the movie is shot, and if I didn't even enjoy the acting of everyone in this world who act like complete weirdos, and if I didn't like the weird and confusing dialogue, and I only kinda liked the music and some of the body horror stuff, I can't really give it a high or even a mediocre rating.
First of all, the movie doesn't even try to present the plot or the characters in an interesting way. Like the director doesn't even care, which there might be something admirable there, but it doesn't make for a good movie. Like do you remember the movie Passengers from 2016, which had an interesting plot but it was mediocre at best, then someone edited the movie and replaced the order of acts 1 and 2 and it became a whole new movie with mystery, suspense, and tension and it made it so much better? Yeah, this movie feels like that but a hundred times worse.
Presentation really matters. Things just happen in the movie without a single ounce of suspense or tension. We don't know the characters and we don't really get to know their actual motivation and what they're thinking about. There's even a scene like 10 minutes into the movie that reveals something about the protagonist, but it's presented in the blandest and most unsurprising way. Like it's technically a twist, but it doesn't feel like a twist at all. It's like "oh, so this happened, cool I guess". Like they could've shown that in the beginning and it would've made no difference at all.
I don't really know why, but apparently, everyone in the future is super creepy and absolute weirdos. Everyone acts weird like they're not even human, but the weirdest one is the Kristen Stewart. Why does she talk like that? Who knows! Why is she always on the verge of crying? Why does she talk and act like someone had her balls in their hand and was squeezing them and she wants to cry and can't speak loud enough all the time?
Why is the dialogue so weird, confusing, and meaningless? Why does Viggo Mortensen go around in a ninja suit like he's a vampire or something? "I get cold", ok that's cool, but why is that?
Why is everyone obsessed with the organs and autopsy? "Surgery is the new sex". Really? Did humans develop a new desire related to maiming that is better than sex and orgasm? How? The movie doesn't even tell us if or how or why they are enjoying it more than sex. They say at the beginning that humans no longer feel pain and infections are gone, so no matter what you do with your body, you won't get a disease or feel any pain at all. But how does that lead to enjoying getting cut and having your internal organs pulled out feel better than sex? Why is everything shown from the life of these people, is just eating weird mushy food and talking about bodies and organs every second of their life? Like are they so obsessed that they have literally nothing else to do?
The budget is really small, so I get that we're not gonna get Blade Runner 2049 level of world-building and set pieces. But the whole movie is literally in ruins and ship graveyards. I'm not kidding, literally every "house", every "art gallery", and that office is an abandoned house with rundown walls.
I really don't know what the point of the "twist" was, if it wasn't gonna go anywhere. Or the point of those two women, if they don't show, tell, or even hint at who they were and why they did what they did. It just seems like a movie with a couple of ideas that go absolutely nowhere at all.
The only movie from Cronenberg I've seen, a while back, was eXistenZ, and I absolutely loved it. I enjoyed the twists, I enjoyed the mystery, the suspense, and all the gross body horror stuff, and I was really shocked how well it predicted what video games in the future are gonna look like. Like you could say it was Matrix before Matrix. So I thought Cronenberg was pretty smart and he predicted video games really well in a genius way. But this is nothing like that, the concept is weird and it's presented in the blandest way as if the director didn't care at all, it's not clear what it wants to say or what it is actually about, and it's not a fun watch like eXistenZ.
But then again, eXistenZ shockingly did really predict how video games were going to be very well, so who knows, maybe we'll look back at this movie in 30 years and we'll be awestruck with how accurate this movie was!
First of all, the movie doesn't even try to present the plot or the characters in an interesting way. Like the director doesn't even care, which there might be something admirable there, but it doesn't make for a good movie. Like do you remember the movie Passengers from 2016, which had an interesting plot but it was mediocre at best, then someone edited the movie and replaced the order of acts 1 and 2 and it became a whole new movie with mystery, suspense, and tension and it made it so much better? Yeah, this movie feels like that but a hundred times worse.
Presentation really matters. Things just happen in the movie without a single ounce of suspense or tension. We don't know the characters and we don't really get to know their actual motivation and what they're thinking about. There's even a scene like 10 minutes into the movie that reveals something about the protagonist, but it's presented in the blandest and most unsurprising way. Like it's technically a twist, but it doesn't feel like a twist at all. It's like "oh, so this happened, cool I guess". Like they could've shown that in the beginning and it would've made no difference at all.
I don't really know why, but apparently, everyone in the future is super creepy and absolute weirdos. Everyone acts weird like they're not even human, but the weirdest one is the Kristen Stewart. Why does she talk like that? Who knows! Why is she always on the verge of crying? Why does she talk and act like someone had her balls in their hand and was squeezing them and she wants to cry and can't speak loud enough all the time?
Why is the dialogue so weird, confusing, and meaningless? Why does Viggo Mortensen go around in a ninja suit like he's a vampire or something? "I get cold", ok that's cool, but why is that?
Why is everyone obsessed with the organs and autopsy? "Surgery is the new sex". Really? Did humans develop a new desire related to maiming that is better than sex and orgasm? How? The movie doesn't even tell us if or how or why they are enjoying it more than sex. They say at the beginning that humans no longer feel pain and infections are gone, so no matter what you do with your body, you won't get a disease or feel any pain at all. But how does that lead to enjoying getting cut and having your internal organs pulled out feel better than sex? Why is everything shown from the life of these people, is just eating weird mushy food and talking about bodies and organs every second of their life? Like are they so obsessed that they have literally nothing else to do?
The budget is really small, so I get that we're not gonna get Blade Runner 2049 level of world-building and set pieces. But the whole movie is literally in ruins and ship graveyards. I'm not kidding, literally every "house", every "art gallery", and that office is an abandoned house with rundown walls.
I really don't know what the point of the "twist" was, if it wasn't gonna go anywhere. Or the point of those two women, if they don't show, tell, or even hint at who they were and why they did what they did. It just seems like a movie with a couple of ideas that go absolutely nowhere at all.
The only movie from Cronenberg I've seen, a while back, was eXistenZ, and I absolutely loved it. I enjoyed the twists, I enjoyed the mystery, the suspense, and all the gross body horror stuff, and I was really shocked how well it predicted what video games in the future are gonna look like. Like you could say it was Matrix before Matrix. So I thought Cronenberg was pretty smart and he predicted video games really well in a genius way. But this is nothing like that, the concept is weird and it's presented in the blandest way as if the director didn't care at all, it's not clear what it wants to say or what it is actually about, and it's not a fun watch like eXistenZ.
But then again, eXistenZ shockingly did really predict how video games were going to be very well, so who knows, maybe we'll look back at this movie in 30 years and we'll be awestruck with how accurate this movie was!