Crimes of the Future – first-look review

In a grim ver­sion of the future where humans have evolved past the point of being able to feel pain, surgery is the new sex. Per­for­mance artists cut them­selves open for sali­vat­ing spec­ta­tors; a new dis­ease caused new organs to grow with­in the body; a mys­te­ri­ous under­ground cult has formed around the con­sump­tion of tox­ic waste.

At the cen­tre of this grave new world are Saul Tenser (Vig­go Mortensen) and his part­ner Caprice (Léa Sey­doux) who have become renowned for an act in which the audi­ence watch as Caprice cuts strange unknown organs from Saul’s body; this brings them to the atten­tion of the Nation­al Organ Reg­istry, which, inspired by Tenser and Caprice’s per­for­mances, has been estab­lished to research the ail­ment known as Accel­er­at­ed Evo­lu­tion Syndrome.

Bureau­crats Wip­pet (Don McK­eller) and Tim­lin (Kris­ten Stew­art) are fas­ci­nat­ed by Saul and Caprice, though Timlin’s inter­est goes beyond the bounds of pro­fes­sion­al curios­i­ty. After watch­ing Saul and Caprice per­form, she con­fess­es an attrac­tion to him. Mean­while, griev­ing father Lang Dotrice (Scott Speed­man) approach­es Tenser with a macabre propo­si­tion for a new show.

For Cro­nen­berg – return­ing to film­mak­ing after a nine-year absence – it’s a return to themes that made his name, reflect­ing on the dichoto­my between hor­ror and beau­ty, the grow­ing need for spec­ta­cle in an increas­ing­ly desen­si­tised world, and the lim­its (and lib­er­a­tion) of the human body.

All this cer­tain­ly sounds promis­ing, and with a stel­lar cast, the stage should be set for a wel­come return to form for the king of body hor­ror – but some­thing about Crimes of the Future doesn’t quite deliv­er, despite the best efforts of Mortensen and Sey­doux who have excel­lent chem­istry. The con­vo­lut­ed script means there are a lot of long con­ver­sa­tions which ulti­mate­ly don’t say a great deal.

Tenser is work­ing under­cov­er for the New Vice depart­ment (that’s where the Crimes of the Future come in) but it’s nev­er real­ly explained what he gains from this, and the sub­plot fiz­zles out into noth­ing even­tu­al­ly, as does his brief dal­liance with Tim­lin, who takes an inter­est in him after watch­ing his per­for­mance for the first time.

There are a few scenes of surgery that should present Cro­nen­berg with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get back to basics, but the result is fair­ly under­whelm­ing, with hokey effects and CGI that wouldn’t look out of place in eXis­tenZ, a film made some two decades ear­li­er. For a direc­tor who made his name through cre­at­ing thrilling­ly strange and off-putting images, every­thing feels curi­ous­ly sedate in Crimes of the Future – even its more shock­ing scenes have such an obvi­ous arti­fi­cial sheen to them, it’s hard to feel any real invest­ment in the events unfolding.

One high­light, how­ev­er, is Howard Shore’s score, his best work in quite some time and a wel­come return to col­lab­o­ra­tion between the com­pos­er and the direc­tor. It’s unset­tling and melo­dra­mat­ic in all the right ways, but the film can’t quite deliv­er on the promis­es its thrilling sound­scape is mak­ing. The end­ing feels abrupt, leav­ing more ques­tions than answers, which might be for­giv­able if the pri­or set-up had been juici­er. Per­haps it’s a case of Cro­nen­berg being a vic­tim of his own suc­cess in that Crimes of the Future nev­er quite reach­es the dizzy­ing lev­els of spec­ta­cle that his best films man­aged to make appear effortless.

Instead, it’s a halfway point between the fleshy plea­sures of his ear­ly work and the philo­soph­i­cal rumi­na­tion of Late Cro­nen­berg. Moments of wit sug­gest he’s pok­ing fun at the audience’s appetite for destruc­tion, and per­haps with­hold­ing in such a man­ner is his own joke about the car­nage he used to com­mit to on-screen, but for a film about the per­ver­sion of bod­i­ly flesh and desire, Crimes of the Future doesn’t quite deliv­er a vin­tage blast of car­nal delights.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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