Crimes of the Future (2022): A Movie Review

The cinema industry is doing poorly, and buying some food and a drink with your ticket is the best way to support them. That’s where the profits are for the cinema people.

I used to smuggle in half-bottles of whisky with friends, and mix them with cinema-bought drinks. The cinemas were doing fine, and most didn’t offer alcoholic beverages. It brought us to the movie theatre at the weekend in our twenties, and was fun at the time. We were quiet and respectful audience members, who happened to be drunk and seeing things through a slightly different lens by the third act.

For Cronenberg’s new movie, I have one suggestion:

Skip all food.

I made a tremendously bad choice of purchasing cheesy nachos. After a half hour battle of trying to look away from the screen to eat a nacho, I gave up and left them on the floor.

Which to be fair, is still financial support, and it’s not the same thing as wasting meat. But, it was certainly a mistake I would not like you, dear reader, to repeat.

Crimes of the Future is like a weird hybrid Cronenberg/Cronenberg movie. It has all the grotesque body horror of his classic films, but feels like his more recent movies in tone.

It is not a bad Cronenberg movie, but I am also not sure it is a good movie. The bits that are like his recent movies are not good, in most ways (dull, overlong, superficially philosophical, muddy). The bits that are like his past movies are good, in some ways (though they feel slightly askew). That is the best way I can describe it. It makes for a movie that is in some ways great, but does not leave you feeling like you just saw a good movie.

I think this is a movie you have to judge as a Cronenberg movie, and not just a movie. This can happen (see the late, great Godard, for example).

Hopefully that gives you a feel for what to expect. A slightly confused mess from a ridiculously talented artist at the end of his career. Like a “I’ll do one more like that” entry to his filmography.

The concept is fascinating. Humans have lost their capacity to feel pain, except for a few, who experience pain in sleep. Humans also no longer suffer from infections. Some are growing mutated…