eXistenZ | Blu-ray Review

Even more pertinent today than it was back at its release in 1999, eXistenZ (Berlin Film Festival – Silver Berlin Bear winner) finds David Cronenberg exploring familiar thematics of humanity’s often disturbing relationship with technology. Over the course of the last decade our identities have become ever tied with our need to interact within the digital realm through social media and online video games that only continue to grow in popularity. On the cusp of the digital explosion within the mainstream consciousness, Cronenberg employs this obsessive digital escapism to jump into a nearing future where video games or biological contraptions that can transport the player to an alternative reality. Conceptually complex but blatantly fun, the feature is a counterpoint to the much more digitized and intrinsically serious film The Matrix, while operating as a throwback to its Canadian helmer’s horror roots, making full use of grotesque physical effects while continuously forcing the audience to question what ‘reality’ actually is.

In a future not far from now, video games have evolved into the aforementioned biologically based technology in which the players plug in via ‘bioports’, which are finger sized holes that are installed into people’s spines with an ease that compares to that of getting one’s ear pierced. Due to the divisive, revelatory nature of the games, game designers are heralded as icons by their fans and the devil by extremist detractors that comprise the ‘realist’ movement. When Allegra (Jennifer Jason Leigh) unveils her new game pod, eXistenZ, an attempt on her life is made. With the help of a lowly security guard named Pikul (Jude Law), she escapes with her life’s work in tow, and the two travel into the countryside to lay low until she can be sure that she and eXistenZ is safe and sound.

After discovering that her pod has been wounded, Allegra aches to test her creation to make sure it is alright, but she needs a nice, friendly partner to play with, and Pikul, though admittedly wanting to work in the video game field, has never been fitted with a bioport. Though resistant, Pikul submits to the illegal installation of a port by a moonlighting, petrol pumping hick appropriately named Gas (Willem Dafoe), but the port turns out to be a lemon placed with the intention of frying Allegra’s console. Narrowly escaping, the pair make contact with an old friend of her’s (Ian Holm) who has the know-how to perform surgery on eXistenZ and replace Pikul’s dud port. Finally ready to enter her game, Allegra and Pikul link in and find themselves in an alternate reality in which they must interact with their environment to progress through a semi-predetermined storyline, but it doesn’t take long for reality to blur until they lose themselves in video game verisimilitude.

Cronenberg’s turn of the millennium creation is an odd concoction of high concept intellectualization of technology that’s paired with awkwardly unnatural performances that hinder the believability of the overall film. Part of the issue is that both Law and Leigh perform a bit over cranked, making a film already stretching our suspension of disbelief with an array of fun, gross out physical effects that bring biologic video games to life, feel that much more off. As the film prods into the fetishization of technology (Allegra is constantly rubbing her pod or feeling up her and Pikul’s bioports), their relationship becomes even more ridiculous, as they seem to have little to no chemistry to transcend the slanted realities they inhibit. Though the rigidly wonky lead performances detract from the overall impact of eXistenZ, the feature remains a fun sci-fi romp into the inquisition of reality that hinges on signature Cronenberg style.

The Disc:

Echo Bridge continues to slowly reissue memorable 90s Miramax releases with eXistenZ being the latest. Like many of the Echo Bridge Blu-rays, the transfer does a decent job reproducing the film, with plenty of detail and a generally natural looking color palette. There is however an array of moments in which there is digital flicker and occasional physical artifacts that find themselves on screen. Impressively subtle, the DTS-HD 5.1 master track sounds quite warm and alive with clear dialogue and depth in bass, but it is at its best as it carefully moves around the soundscape to the surrounds. The disc itself comes packaged in a standard Blu-ray case.

Interviews with Jude Law, Willem Defoe and special effects supervisor James Isaac
What at first seems like standard promo interviews for the film’s release, these interviews range from Jude’s fairly in-depth conversations that explore how he got involved and the film’s themes of the advancement of technology and our relationship with it, to Willem’s which at first seems stunted but bridges into talk of his own relationship with technology. James Isaac, who tragically passed earlier this year, gets the bulk of screen time, speaking for almost a half hour about many key creations for the film.

Final Thoughts:

eXistenZ plays with our ideas of reality so guilelessly through the implementation of an actual adult-intended toy that it should be no surprise that the pleasures of the film are mostly surface level fun. Cronenberg manages to touch on plenty of pertinent themes that seem to only continue to grow in relevancy as our own realities continue to intermingle with computer technology more and more frequently, but the feature lacks a solid emotional core due to either mis-casting or poor performance direction. With another pair of leads it may have been trAnscendenZ.