Crimes Of The Future Review: Cronenberg's Body Horror Intrigues & Underwhelms

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Written and directed by David Cronenberg, Crimes of the Future marks his first time behind the camera in eight years. The film, which is graphic enough that it irked some audience members enough that they walked out of its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, is teeming with body horror and intriguing concepts. But none of the concepts or character developments fully come together, leaving the film’s potential wasted while setting up interesting arcs that go nowhere.

Set at some point in the future, Crimes of the Future follows Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), a performance artist who is experiencing Accelerated Evolution Syndrome, inexplicably growing new organs that are removed surgically by his partner and former trauma surgeon Caprice (Léa Seydoux) in public shows that are quite sensual. It’s a showcase of humans and machinery working side by side and it’s taken very seriously. Saul is one of a small population of humans who still experiences pain at all. This makes him a person of interest to many, including National Organ Registry investigator Timlin (Kristen Stewart), who is drawn to Saul after seeing one of the pair’s performances. The politics surrounding human evolution starts to emerge with the involvement of Detective Cope (Welket Bungué), and things take an interesting turn when the mysterious Lang Dotrice (Scott Speedman) approaches Caprice and Saul about performing an autopsy for their next show.

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The premise is fascinating, especially as Cronenberg peels back the layers of a society that is torn when it comes to the development of humanity. Arguments for staunching the evolution of the body in a bid to maintain what makes the population “human”