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Existenz Movie Review

Existenz is a 1999 science fiction horror film directed by David Cronenberg and starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law. It’s a very mediocre, frustrating genre movie.

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“Hey, tell me the truth…

Are we still in the game?“

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In the near future, people start to magnify game designers for what they create as superstars and players can organically enter inside the games. I love ‘The Fly’, but other than that stellar film, most of Cronenberg’s cinematic output is quite unappealing to me. Case in point – Existenz. This is one of his weakest and most frustrating efforts.

This is a very odd movie that simply did not work. In it, Cronenberg tried to mix gaming with practical effects and those two did not mash well at all. There was no need for this story to have gory elements, but the director couldn’t help himself, so he ended up infusing it with so much violence, gore and bombastic campiness.

The basic concept was a solid one, but the execution was so problematic that it tarnished any hope that this premise had to be great. The twist ending was an annoying one while the rest of the movie is too slow, too talky and way too pretentious while consistently being monotonous not just in pace, but in the actors’ line delivery as well.

Yes, Existenz does have a terrific cast of competent actors, but Cronenberg directed them horribly, which resulted in some of their worst performances to date. Jennifer Jason Leigh fared the best of the bunch in the most interesting role, but Jude Law was quite mediocre in his monotonous, tiresome delivery. Willem Dafoe and Ian Holm were thoroughly underutilized, which was a real shame given their caliber.

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The gadgets are intriguing, but hardly ever explained. The same goes for those interesting, but underexplained creatures. Some of the imagery in this movie is definitely cool and unique, but we get so little of it explained properly that the film ended up being messy and underdeveloped in every aspect. The copout ending was disappointing too.