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eXistenZ

1999

David Cronenberg

Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Don McKellar, Willem Dafoe ...

6.2

13,675

Sci-Fi. Thriller Allegra Geller, the leading game designer in the world, is testing her new virtual reality game, eXistenZ with a focus group. As they begin, she is attacked by a fanatic assassin. She flees with a young marketing trainee, Ted Pikul, assigned as her bodyguard. Unfortunately, her pod, an organic gaming device that contains the only copy of the eXistenZ game program, is damaged. To inspect it, she talks Ted into accepting a gameport in his ... [+]

	Author	Review
United Kingdom	Kim Newman Empire	"Less weighty than Cronenberg's more 'important' work, this rediscovers a pleasure in action filmmaking absent since his 'early, funny ones' and deploys the mannerisms we loved in 'Shivers', 'Rabid'... (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)'	POS
United States	Joshua Rothkopf Rolling Stone	"As always, Cronenberg is inviting us to get (mind)fucked and enjoy it."	POS
United States	Janet Maslin The New York Times	"[It's] meant to have a whiff of the philosophical, even if its intellectual ambition seems mostly limited to spelling affectations"	NEG
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"'The Matrix' is mainstream sci-fi, but 'eXistenZ', written by Cronenberg, is much stranger; it creates a world where organic and inorganic are not separate states, but kind of chummy (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Lisa Schwarzbaum Entertainment Weekly	"[A] subversive and even mocking take on the seductiveness of virtual reality."	POS
United States	Desson Thomson The Washington Post	"A triumphant return to the icky, otherworldly eerieness that graced such earlier Cronenberg works as 'Scanners', 'Videodrome' and 'Dead Ringers'."	POS
United States	James Berardinelli ReelViews	"Because of the potential of the idea and Cronenberg's reputation as a film maker, it's a real disappointment to watch 'eXistenZ' fall apart the way it does (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 4)"	NEG
United States	Maitland McDonagh TV Guide	"A creepy tale of corporate espionage and rubber reality (...) Cronenberg's first original screenplay since the seminal 'Videodrome' actually feels like a continuation of it (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	POS

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