After more than a decade exploring other subjects and genres that interested him, filmmaker David Cronenberg returned to the so-called “body horror” cycle of his early career with the 1999 thriller eXistenZ. While the director himself has argued that this particular movie was more science-fiction than horror, the connective tissue (in multiple senses) with his earlier work makes it a natural pairing with the likes of The Brood, Scanners, or Videodrome.

Released in early 1999, eXistenZ also shares certain thematic preoccupations that had been circulating in the cultural zeitgeist toward the end of the millennium, when movies like Dark City, The Thirteenth Floor, and of course The Matrix all arrived within a year of each other. Unfortunately, those similarities wound up working against it. Although critics were generally supportive, audiences had no interest and directed all their ticket-buying money to the flashier spectacles.

Title:	eXistenZ
Year of Release:	1999
Director:	David Cronenberg
Watched On:	4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Also Available On:	Blu-ray Various VOD rental and purchase platforms

eXistenZ is a very peculiar beast, a movie ostensibly about Virtual Reality and video games from a filmmaker with next to no knowledge of or even interest in either of those things. You won’t see a computer or a video monitor in the film at all. Most of the story exists in a specifically Cronenbergian universe where technology has evolved (or mutated) in a bio-organic direction. In the director’s worldview, eager gamers install “bio-ports” in the base of their spines, into which they can plug umbilical tethers connected to writhing organic flesh pods that download the games directly into their nervous systems.

Jennifer Jason Lee stars as Allegra Geller, a superstar game designer known as the Game Pod Goddess. Upon the test-launch of her latest immersive VR masterpiece, Allegra is nearly killed by a fanatical assassin convinced that her games are an affront to reality. Barely saved by her company’s security team, she’s ushered from the premises by Ted Pikul (Jude Law), a marketing trainee ordered to get her to safety and, most importantly, “Trust no one.” On the run and seeking refuge, Allegra and Ted find themselves caught up in the machinations of what may be either a cult movement or a rival tech company’s attempt at corporate sabotage, or possibly both.

Complicating matters, Allegra insists that she and Ted must play her VR game to ensure that it hasn’t been damaged or compromised. Doing so leads down a rabbit hole where the two of them have trouble distinguishing which reality is actually real at any given moment.

Notable supporting roles are filled by Christopher Eccleston as the seminar leader at the game launch, Willem Dafoe as a suspicious gas station attendant named “Gas,” and Ian Holm as an engineer/surgeon with a silly accent.

In classic Cronenberg fashion, eXistenZ presents a fusion of gross-out gore and sexually-charged imagery, one bleeding seamlessly into the other. The game pods look like fleshy XBox controllers made out of the pulsating erogenous zones of some mutant creature engineered explicitly for the purpose of stimulating erotic gratification from the player. The director also of course wouldn’t install a new orifice in his characters’ bodies without suggesting it serve some kinky use.

To that end, the movie fits in very well with his older work. However, it doesn’t quite live up to the best of them. For a commentary on the way electronic mass media disrupts and corrupts the human mind, I think Videodrome remains his masterpiece in this genre, while eXistenZ is a lesser attempt at a similar theme.

One of the biggest problems with the film is that Cronenberg doesn’t seem to understand anything about video games. That starts with the fact that almost all of the gamers lining up to play the first round of Allegra’s newest sim are almost comically old. (If Cronenberg is making a point with that, it isn’t at all clear.) The game itself appears to have no narrative or structure or point; even Allegra herself doesn’t know what it’s about. The majority of players plug in, only to wait around extended periods before showing up as small supporting characters and then quickly disappearing, to sit out the rest of the game while the main heroes finish the story without them. That just wouldn’t be a fun or interesting experience for anyone except the two primary players.

To be fair, perhaps that issue is addressed, or at least partially so, by a last-minute plot twist. But even on that front, the movie feels like it has one or two twists too many. The narrative logic doesn’t quite hold up to scrutiny. Frankly, if the final scene is real, then nothing that happened prior to it makes any sense at all.

If not entirely successful, eXistenZ is still a fairly entertaining extension of David Cronenberg’s bizarre body-horror universe. The film has some interesting ideas, and a pretty amusing satirical streak poking fun at the inanity of corporate branding and marketing slogans. I enjoyed the movie when I first saw it in the theater in 1999, and continue to find pleasures in it now two and a half decades later.

The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Cronenberg’s eXistenZ has long had a difficult history on home video. Back in 1999, Miramax put out a subpar DVD in the United States with only a theatrical trailer for bonus content. At that time, I imported a Special Edition disc from Canada in order to get three audio commentaries and a documentary about production designer Carol Spier. Jumping forward to 2012, budget distributor Echo Bridge released the movie on a Blu-ray widely criticized for poor picture quality, and repackaged it a couple times as part of a Miramax Triple Feature and a bizarrely inappropriate six-film “Fast Action Pack” collection.

More recently, boutique label Vinegar Syndrome licensed the film for 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and released it at the end of 2023 in a standard keepcase edition or a more expensive Limited Edition. The latter was packaged with a booklet and a slipcover featuring a close-up image of Jude Law’s hairy belly that frankly skeeved me out quite a bit. I understand how that’s intentional, but personally I wasn’t a fan of the artwork. The Limited Edition sold out quickly regardless. I’m a little saddened to lose the booklet essays, but in other respects I prefer the regular keepcase art of the famous “gristle gun” from the movie, which is also icky but in a more acceptable fashion. (If you really want the belly art, the sleeve is reversible.)

I’d never thought of eXistenZ as one of Cronenberg’s best-looking movies, but this beautiful 4K transfer has me reconsidering that possibility. Mind you, that’s primarily the case after the opening credits, which were created with some low-res computer-composited animation back in the day and don’t look so great as the movie starts. As soon as the proper live-action footage begins, however, the 1.85:1 image is exceptionally sharp and detailed throughout, with very rich contrasts and colors. I put in a few minutes of the accompanying standard Blu-ray from the same master afterward for comparison, and that disc also looks very good, but this is a situation where the 4K resolution and HDR grading offer appreciable benefits that give the movie an almost tactile sensation, as if you could step right into the screen and feel the textures of every scene.

Audio is offered in choices labeled “original 5.1 surround soundtrack” or “2.0 stereo mix” on the disc case, both authored in DTS-HD Master Audio format. I take this to mean that Vinegar Syndrome took existing tracks provided to them and that nothing has been remastered. I did some flipping back and forth and found the 5.1 a little stronger, though the Howard Shore musical score still sounds disappointingly flat to my ear and could use more depth and dynamic range. On the other hand, the 5.1 track has some impressively strong and loud sound effects at times, including the firing of the gristle gun and one big explosion toward the end.

The 4K disc has no less than four audio commentaries. Three are recycled from that old 1999 Canadian DVD: director David Cronenberg, cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, and visual effects supervisor Jim Isaac. New to this release is a scholarly commentary from film historian (and Fordham University professor) Dr. Jennifer Moorman.

In addition to those, the Blu-ray in the case is loaded up with more supplements, including that aforementioned documentary about Carol Spier, plus archival promotional featurettes, EPK interviews, still galleries, and a trailer. Interviews with art director Tamara Deverell, make-up effects artist Stephen Dupuis, producer Robert Lantos, and opening titles designer Robert Pilchowski add up to just under an hour of new content.

Related

• Christopher Eccleston
  • Shallow Grave (1994)

Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the standard Blu-ray edition of the film and are used for illustration purposes only.