By 1999, the world was gearing up for Y2K and The Matrix was blowing teenage minds across the globe. Somewhere in that gelatinous digital soup came eXistenZ, David Cronenberg’s wet and squishy answer to simulated reality. It has everything you’d expect from a Cronenberg film—bioports, fleshy guns, mucus-covered video game controllers that look like rejected sex toys—and yet somehow, despite the bodily fluids and plot twists, it manages to be as dull as watching someone play an early PlayStation demo while whispering about God.
eXistenZ is a movie that asks: “What is real?” And then, for the next 97 minutes, answers with: “Who cares? Let’s hump some game pods and mumble.”
The plot—if you can unstick it from the film’s gooey, undercooked layers—follows Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the world’s most famous game designer and proud owner of the most uncharismatic haircut of 1999. She’s just unveiled her latest creation, eXistenZ, a fully immersive virtual reality game that plugs directly into players’ spinal columns via a fleshy port known as a “bioport”—basically a rectal-looking USB port nestled in your lower back like an erotic belly button with a grudge.
During a demo of the game, someone tries to assassinate her with a gun made of bones and teeth (yes, you read that correctly). She flees with her reluctant bodyguard, Ted Pikul (Jude Law), a nervous marketing flunky with no bioport and no charisma. Their adventure through simulated realities ensues—except it’s less “action-packed psychological thriller” and more “two people crouch behind dumpsters and argue about metaphysics while elbow-deep in organic game consoles.”
Cronenberg’s obsession with body horror is in full force here, but instead of being shocking or provocative, it’s just… sticky. Everyone in this movie is wet. The game pods squelch. The guns drip. Conversations about digital freedom are punctuated by moist sucking noises. There’s even a scene where Pikul has his bioport installed in a dirty garage while Allegra straddles him like she’s changing his oil. It’s supposed to be sexual, or awkward, or symbolic—but it’s mostly just gross. Not scary. Not profound. Just a Cronenberg-flavored wet dream in need of a towel and a better script.
Speaking of the script: eXistenZ tries desperately to be clever. Characters say things like, “Are we still in the game?” or “Who’s the player and who’s the character?” like they’re dropping philosophical nukes, when really they sound like philosophy undergrads trying to explain Black Mirror over edibles. The dialogue is wooden, the pacing uneven, and every plot twist lands with a thud instead of a gasp. It wants to be Philip K. Dick by way of Resident Evil, but ends up feeling like Spy Kids directed by a malfunctioning flesh golem.
Jennifer Jason Leigh, bless her, does her best with the material. She’s mysterious, cold, and vaguely threatening—kind of like if Apple’s Siri grew skin and started making biotech games with a mood disorder. Jude Law, meanwhile, gives one of the most impressively inert performances of his career. He plays Ted like a man who just realized halfway through filming that he’s allergic to organic puppets and regret. Their chemistry is nonexistent, their banter grates like a dull cheese grater on a Styrofoam block, and watching them stumble through scene after scene of “Wait, is this the game?” starts to feel like Groundhog Day with less charm and more pus.
The supporting cast includes Ian Holm, Willem Dafoe, and Don McKellar—talented actors clearly trying to figure out how they ended up delivering lines about “meta-flesh interfaces” and “game-fueled spiritual transcendence” with straight faces. Willem Dafoe plays a gas station attendant who gives Ted a shady bioport and then promptly vanishes. You know your film’s got issues when even Dafoe looks like he’d rather be anywhere else—like in a Speedo threatening Tobey Maguire, for example.
Visually, the film is muted and uninspired. The environments are grey, muddy, and feature the kind of early-digital design that screams “We built this level in a Quake engine while blindfolded.” The tech, despite being “organic,” all looks like it was dug out of a swamp behind a failed sex toy factory. There’s no sense of scale, no sense of place—just a series of vague industrial settings where characters mutter, “This doesn’t feel real,” as if the audience hasn’t already caught on.
And the final twist? After 90 minutes of simulated nonsense, character loops, and digital double-crosses, the movie pulls the classic “Maybe this is the real game!” card and then shrugs its way into the credits. It’s supposed to be ambiguous. Instead, it feels like the narrative equivalent of someone smashing your console just as the final boss loads. Not exhilarating. Not thought-provoking. Just an oily sigh of “Well, we ran out of time.”
Cronenberg has always been fascinated with the collision of flesh and machine, of man and media. In The Fly, it was tragic. In Videodrome, it was prophetic. In eXistenZ, it’s just damp and directionless. This is a film that confuses confusion with complexity, assumes wet textures are scary, and seems convinced that every moist squelch is a metaphor for our decaying humanity. Instead, it plays like a parody of Cronenberg made by a sentient wet nap.
Final Thoughts:
eXistenZ is a drippy, joyless slog through muddy ideas, half-baked performances, and stomach-turning sound design. It wants to be deep. It wants to be clever. It ends up being a game no one wants to play. You’ll leave the film not questioning reality, but questioning your life choices and why Cronenberg thought a pistol made of spinal cord and gristle was the height of thematic subtlety.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 leaking game pods.
A movie that plugs directly into your spine, drains your patience, and makes you long for a good old-fashioned head explosion. Game over.
