Naked Lunch (1991)
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Naked Lunch Movie Review
Naked Lunch is a 1991 surrealist science fiction drama film directed by David Cronenberg and starring Peter Weller. It’s an overly absurd movie.
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“Exterminate all rational thought.
That is the conclusion I have come to“
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After developing an addiction to the substance he uses to kill bugs, an exterminator accidentally kills his wife and becomes involved in a secret government plot being orchestrated by giant bugs in a port town in North Africa. Based on a William S. Burroughs novel, this story was never meant for the cinematic treatment given that it is almost plotless and way too strange even for Cronenberg himself. He did a better job with this material than most others would, but still this had been a foolish endeavor from the start.
Apparently the story is all about psychological control, drug addiction and closeted homosexuality. These themes are definitely present, but the movie is so hollow in plot and so focused on weirdness and off-putting visuals that it failed to develop any of those themes more properly. The semblance of a plot was definitely there, but a clear storyline was never developed unfortunately.
The same goes for the characters. None of these people got any arc or meaning to them. Peter Weller is pretty good in what is one of the biggest roles in terms of screen time, but hardly all too memorable. Judy Davis is fine and Ian Holm is reliably strong and well cast, but none of these performers deserved to play these underdeveloped and slight characters.
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Naked Lunch is at its best when it is focusing on the body horror elements, something that Cronenberg has always had a knack at doing. The practical effects on display are quite ingenious and the creatures are intriguingly and grotesquely designed. Yes, most of these scenes were gross, but I would much rather have these disgusting moments over anything else in this movie as at least those gave it some edge and excitement. The rest of the movie us boring, weakly paced and featuring dialogue that is deliberately off-putting and odd.
Naked Lunch is at its best when it’s focusing on the body horror elements, something that David Cronenberg has always excelled at. The practical effects on display are superb and the creatures were memorably grotesque. But the rest of the movie is much less interesting – it has only a semblance of a plot, the dialogue is deliberately off-putting, the themes are interesting but not at all explored, and the characters are underdeveloped. It’s an overly strange and esoteric movie.
My Rating – 3
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