David Cronenberg’s latest feature shares a title with an experimental film he made in 1970. In the wake of the original Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg would effectively invent, refine and then move on from “‘body horror” cinema, leaving a genre-defining canon of fantasy films (Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly) that used the mutations of the flesh to discuss matters of life and death. Since 1988’s Dead Ringers, the Canadian auteur’s preoccupations have been more psychological (notwithstanding the mugwumps of Naked Lunch and the quirky genre return of eXistenZ); from the sexual pathology of Crash, through the stagey Freud/Jung melodrama of A Dangerous Method to the biting Hollywood satire of Maps to the Stars.
This new Crimes of the Future (the script for which dates back to the late 90s) plays like a throwback to Cronenberg’s earliest outre genre outings and also a greatest hits compilation of familiar scrungy themes and fleshy sci-fi motifs from his back catalogue. It may not be vintage fare, but if anyone’s going to do a slightly creaky tribute to the films that once made Cronenberg an icon of thoughtful horror, it might as well be him.
