Review by Dan Taylor
I'm
not exactly what you'd call "on the
cutting edge" of gaming technology.
Up until my recent move the most advanced
game system I had was a Sega Genesis and
the only game that I played was NHL 2000.
Since then I've actually regressed, and
regularly fire up one of my two trusty ol'
Atari 2600's for a little 'River Raid',
'Defender' or 'The Empire Strikes Back'.
Man, I still love blasting those AT-ATs!
So I didn't know what to expect
from this latest effort from David Croneneberg
(RABID, THE BROOD, THE FLY, DEAD RINGERS,
CRASH), which'd been described to me as
being some sorta loopy, Cronenbergy mix
of TRON and THE MATRIX.
Jennifer Jason Leigh (FAST
TIMES AT RIDGEMEONT HIGH, SINGLE WHITE FEMALE)
stars as Allegra Geller, an all-star game
designer who survives an assasination attempt
while debuting her new epic, the titular
'eXistenZ.' Of course, since it's Cronenberg,
the game plugs into a bio-port that taps
into your spinal cord, the game controllers
look like those fake vaginas they sell at
sex shops (or so I've heard), and the gun
used in the attempt is some sort of goo-covered
bio-gun that fires human teeth instead of
bullets. And yes, it's all quite as icky
as it sounds.
But Allegra survives the attempt
like some sort of plucky, anti-social, futuristic,
blonde Ronnie Reagan and escapes into the
wild with Ted Pikul (the ubiquitous Jude
Law), a trainee from the game company's
marketing department. From there the flick's
a jumble of "we're in the game"
or "we're not in the game" moments
as Allegra and Ted port themselves into
'eXistenZ' in order to save the lone copy.
All this despite a hefty bounty placed on
her head by a rival game company, an undergournd
anti-gamer pro-realism movement, and evil
gas station attendants (namely Willem Dafoe
as the creepy "Gas").
Unfortunately, for all the
cool ideas making their way through the
flick – and don't worry, we won't blow
any of them here – the flick could've
used a director with a surer hand at storytelling
and a better grasp of action directing.
Sure, ideas like the realism movement and
the way Allegra and Ted port in and out
of the game's storyline are great, but the
action scenes look like they were put on
by the Max Fleischer players in RUSHMORE.
Certainly better than CRASH,
eXistenZ gives me hope for whatever is coming
next from Cronenberg's twisted, unique mind.
But it pales in comparison to the brilliant
DARK CITY or the action-packed THE MATRIX.
NOTE: Fans of Cronenberg's
episode of the 'Friday the 13th' TV series
in which a televangelist discovers that
the glove in his possession does have healing
powers will recognize Robert A. Silverman
as D'Arcy Nader, a resident of eXistenZ's
gaming environment. Silverman played the
cancer-riddled debunker in the episode.
