Culture
Now Playing: the body horror films of David Cronenberg
By: Gordon Briggs
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Now Playing is a column by film scholar Dr. Gordon Briggs. This installment in the series corresponds to the Now Playing column that ran on Tuesday, May 27 about The Shrouds.
The recent film The Shrouds is one of several by director David Cronenberg that tap into our primal fears about losing control of our bodies and the fragility of our physical being. Here are three other films that exemplify body horror unique to Cronenberg.
Videodrome is a film that gets under your skin and crafts disturbing imagery about how technology changes our bodies. Here, the president of a trashy TV channel (James Woods) descends into a vortex of murder, kink, and mutated bodies when he investigates a mysterious TV show called Videodrome, whose contestants are being murdered. Yes, there are ample amounts of blood and bodily-centered violence. What makes a mark here is how Cronenberg filters much of the horror through objects like telephones and televisions. That choice enables the film to spawn some undeniably strange yet tactile imagery. My favorite of which is a man ripping open his own stomach to pull out a loaded gun. Rating: ★ ★ ★½
Eerie, intelligent, and emotionally moving, The Fly (1986) is a film I hold in high regard. Here, Cronenberg’s remake of the 50s classic, about a scientist who slowly transforms into a fly, uses the gore and grotesque images of the genre to get at something very human. Specifically, a man’s gradual transformation into a monster illustrates the horror of watching someone you love slowly die. The makeup and effects are top-notch, and the script wisely keeps most of the action in one location, but what elevates the movie is the relationship between Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. The two inspire genuine empathy as a couple who love each other but are in conflict with their own bodies. Rating: ★★★★
The Matrix (1999), 13th Floor (1999), Dark City (1998). Back in the late ’90s, we got several films about people trapped in artificial realities, but the weirdest of the bunch was this bizarre body horror-gamer movie by David Cronenberg. With eXistenZ (1999), we follow a game designer who, after escaping an attempt on her life, must take refuge in the artificial reality game she has created. What is effective is how tactile and body-centered the movie is. In this world, computers twitch and pulsate like organs, guns are made out of teeth and bones, and video game play resembles a strange kind of intercourse. It all culminates in a mind-bending ending that contains one of my favorite last lines in a film. Rating: ★ ★ ★½