The films of David Cro­nen­berg – ranked

On the belat­ed and extreme­ly excit­ing occa­sion of a new work by David Cro­nen­berg incom­ing (anoth­er film called Crimes of the Future), we decid­ed to delve back into his delec­table, dis­gust­ing and deranged back cat­a­logue and, pure­ly for sport, rank the films of his fleshy oeu­vre to best.

The top and bot­tom of this list fea­ture Cronenberg’s duel for­ays into the car movie. If you looked long and hard enough at this glossy action quick­ie from 1979, you might see some glim­mers of the fetishis­tic long­ing that were to form the back­bone of 1996’s Crash, but there are prob­a­bly bet­ter ways to spend your time. That’s not to say that this boun­cy sto­ry of the Cana­di­an ral­ly dri­ving scene isn’t a fun lit­tle runaround, but it’s the sort of film that pro­vides kicks that many, many oth­er film­mak­ers are able to sup­ply in a sim­i­lar style. By no means a write-off, and very fun in its own right, but the least Cronenberg‑y Cro­nen­berg film by a long shot. David Jenk­ins

The sec­ond film Cro­nen­berg made lends its title to his lat­est work, but that’s where the con­nec­tion ends. This 40-minute, light­ly-exper­i­men­tal work con­cerns a cat­a­stroph­ic plague caused by cos­met­ic prod­ucts, which has wiped out the glob­al pop­u­la­tion of women. Adri­an Tri­pod is hunt­ing for his men­tor, der­ma­tol­o­gist Anton Rouge, who may have also been wiped out by the virus.

Shot with­out sound, an eeri­ly calm voice-over from Tri­pod reveals how var­i­ous men have adapt­ed to their world with­out women, cul­mi­nat­ing in his join­ing a group of pedophiles who con­spire to rape a young girl in order to impreg­nate her. It’s a har­row­ing watch, and cer­tain­ly touch­es on themes that would become cor­ner­stones of his future oeu­vre – but even at a zip­py 40 min­utes, the film feels glacial. Han­nah Strong

Cro­nen­berg diehards con­sid­er his adap­ta­tion of David Hen­ry Hwang’s play – itself a fic­tion­al­i­sa­tion of a true espi­onage affair, as well as a rejoin­der to Puccini’s opera Madama But­ter­fly – to be a minor out­lier in the director’s fil­mog­ra­phy, a cos­tume-dra­ma mer­ce­nary gig in his first and only col­lab­o­ra­tion with Warn­er Bros. But even if there aren’t any gey­sers of vis­cera or pus-leak­ing ori­fices, he main­tains his pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the body while blend­ing in with more sedate, but­toned-up sub­ject mat­ter than usu­al. In the attrac­tion between a French diplo­mat (Jere­my Irons) and the Pekingese opera singer (John Lone) he doesn’t realise isn’t a woman, the space between one’s legs can be a secret weapon or fatal weakness.

The film’s dar­ing gen­der play (“Only a man knows how a woman is sup­posed to act,” posits one key line of dia­logue) syncs up neat­ly with its invo­ca­tion and dis­man­tling of Ori­en­tal­ist stereo­types; the docil­i­ty and sub­mis­sion expect­ed of women by men is dou­bled in the patro­n­is­ing dynam­ic between white colonis­ers and the Chi­nese locals using that igno­rance against them. It’s not quite sui gener­is in that unmis­tak­ably Cro­nen­ber­gian way, but he wasn’t phon­ing it in, either. Charles Bramesco

David Cronenberg’s first attempt at a fea­ture film fol­lows a group of tele­path­i­cal­ly gift­ed indi­vid­u­als under­go­ing a para­psy­cho­log­i­cal exper­i­ment with­in the clin­i­cal halls of an aca­d­e­m­ic facil­i­ty, while a monot­o­ne voiceover recites beat­nik tech­nob­a­b­ble over silent black white pho­tog­ra­phy. We see the pro­lif­ic direc­tor ges­tat­ing themes of sex­u­al­i­ty and the lim­its of con­scious­ness in equal mea­sure here.

He’s evi­dent­ly always had an excep­tion­al eye for com­po­si­tion, with the art­ful fram­ing of bru­tal­ist archi­tec­ture, detached obser­va­tion­al style and wide-angle shots sub­tly dis­tort­ing the con­tours of real­i­ty and mak­ing for a mes­meris­ing (yet not par­tic­u­lar­ly cap­ti­vat­ing or enjoy­able) watch. The seeds of a win­ning for­mu­la are read­i­ly appar­ent, but Stereo works more as a curio for Cro­nen­berg enthu­si­asts and com­pletists, rather than a stand­alone fea­ture. Mari­na Ashioti

Find you a man who loves unfilmable nov­els as much as David Cro­nen­berg chal­lenge. If counter-cul­ture clas­sics such as Bur­roughs’ ​‘Naked Lunch’ and Ballard’s ​‘Crash’ weren’t enough, DC opt­ed in 2012 to hire the world’s fore­most teen heart­throb (Robert Pat­tin­son) and plonk him in the mid­dle of this chaot­ic and exper­i­men­tal Don DeLil­lo adap­ta­tion about an over­con­fi­dent twen­tysome­thing billionaire’s trip across New York in a Limo to have his hair cut.

Along the road he’s inter­rupt­ed by a coterie of col­leagues, hang­ers-on and finan­cial gurus, as they drop obscure wis­dom bombs on his lap and stoke his sense of exis­ten­tial dread, lead­ing him to dis­cov­er he’s the tar­get for anti-cap­i­tal­ist assas­sins. Minute-by-minute, it’s cer­tain­ly a live­ly and involv­ing work, though you can’t help but feel that its mael­strom of slo­ga­neer­ing (a big Cro­nen­berg trait) is bet­ter served with the rel­a­tive­ly slow and state­ly act of read­ing a nov­el. DJ

This fas­ci­nat­ing and fine film dares to dive into the tech­ni­cal minu­ti­ae of ear­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic inquiry, and is also per­haps one of Cronenberg’s most mature films. That’s not to say it doesn’t push his abid­ing inter­ests in the idio­syn­crasies of the human body, but it does so in a way that avoids the usu­al flights of body hor­ror fan­cy. At its cen­tre is the respect­ful pro­fes­sion­al rival­ry between Carl Jung (Michael Fass­ben­der) and Sig­mund Freud (Vig­go Mortensen), whose work is altered and refined by the pres­ence of patient-turned-aca­d­e­m­ic Sabi­na Spiel­rein (Keira Knightley).

A Dan­ger­ous Method offers a foren­sic exam­i­na­tion into the idea that, in order for one to be able to deduce the psy­cho­log­i­cal tur­moil of oth­ers, one has to expe­ri­ence them direct­ly them­selves. As such, the film chron­i­cles the coiled sex­u­al dynam­ics between Jung and Spiel­rein that result in a strange intel­lec­tu­al tran­scen­dence. It’s per­haps a lit­tle sub­tle and stagey to real­ly hit home dra­mat­i­cal­ly, but def­i­nite­ly earns extra marks for draw­ing out a career-best per­for­mance from Knight­ley. DJ

It’s a real mind-blow­er – wait, where are you going? – not just in the explo­sive dis­plays of tele­ki­net­ic might, but in the galaxy-brained expan­sion of its scope. What starts as a movie about X‑Men-like civil­ians on the loose is warped by para­noid this-goes-all-the-way-to-the-top think­ing into a larg­er con­flict between war­ring fac­tions, with no less than the fate of Earth at stake. The mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex gets in bed with Big Phar­ma to per­pet­u­ate a world-takeover scheme, but Cro­nen­berg doesn’t both­er intro­duc­ing a noble coun­ter­part to oppose them.

The clos­est thing to a pro­tag­o­nist is a moral­ly ambiva­lent pawn, sim­i­lar to the rest of the char­ac­ters in his inef­fec­tu­al small­ness when com­pared to the insti­tu­tion­al work­ings of author­i­ty. He’s scram­bling under­foot as titans in the shad­ows decide his fate, despite his abil­i­ty to make their skulls blow up like rot­ten oranges. Per­haps the sin­gle most well-known sequence from Cronenberg’s body of work, it’s just the smashed cher­ry top­ping a decep­tive­ly dense trea­tise on super­pow­ers, both the com­ic-book and geopo­lit­i­cal kind. CB

Cro­nen­berg and Stephen King feels like a nat­ur­al pair­ing; they’re both inter­est­ed in the rela­tion­ship between vio­lence and human­i­ty, and the here Jef­frey Boam adapts King’s 1979 nov­el about a mild-man­nered teacher who awak­ens from a coma after five years only to dis­cov­er he’s devel­oped clair­voy­ant pow­ers, often relat­ing to trou­bling future events.

John­ny Smith (an against-type Christo­pher Walken) retreats from soci­ety, hor­ri­fied by his unwant­ed gift, but cir­cum­stance soon brings him into con­flict with charis­mat­ic Sen­ate can­di­date Greg Still­son (Mar­tin Sheen), and he’s forced to make a dif­fi­cult deci­sion about the fate of the world. King adap­ta­tions are more miss than hit, but The Dead Zone is one of the bet­ter ones, even if the three-act struc­ture is so rigid it detracts from the emo­tion­al pull of it all. Still, the cli­mac­tic scene in which Still­son uses a baby as a human shield is burned into my reti­nas for life. HS

For a while, it looked like Cronenberg’s final fea­ture would be this acrid dis­em­bow­el­ing of Los Ange­les, a com­pa­ny town of socio­path­ic child stars, exploita­tive stage par­ents and cru­el pri­ma don­nas cling­ing to their last scraps of fad­ing glam­our. If that makes this sound like a retread of the clichés lin­ing Sun­set Blvd – an influ­ence hun­gri­ly can­ni­balised here – rest assured that the incest and pyro­ma­nia push the tone into a sur­re­al, sav­age reg­is­ter all its own.

Beyond a damn­ing com­ment on Hol­ly­wood from a genius con­stant­ly lurk­ing to the north, the notion that looks func­tion as the region­al cur­ren­cy makes way for rous­ing sex­u­al games­man­ship as a uni­form­ly superb ensem­ble includ­ing Robert Pat­tin­son, Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikows­ka, and John Cusack all plot to dom­i­nate one anoth­er. The corpse-strewn Shake­speare­an end­ing could’ve been a fine con­clud­ing note for Cro­nen­berg, proof that his advanced age had done noth­ing to dull the edge of his ter­rif­i­cal­ly deranged film­mak­ing. Mer­ci­ful­ly, it won’t be. CB

Vig­go Mortensen’s sec­ond col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cro­nen­berg also saw him return to Lon­don for a grit­ty sto­ry of forced pros­ti­tu­tion and Russ­ian mob enforcers. Nao­mi Watts is the mid­wife who inad­ver­tent­ly becomes embroiled in London’s seedy crim­i­nal under­bel­ly when she deliv­ers the baby of a teenage girl who dies in child­birth; Mortensen the hard­ened clean­er for the Russ­ian mob tasked with putting an end to her snoop­ing. There’s an icon­ic fight in a bath­house, tat­toos so real­is­tic Mortensen was mis­tak­en for a gang­ster off­set, and Pol­ish auteur Jerzy Skolimows­ki as Anna’s ex-KGB uncle – a recipe for a bru­tal thriller with dead­ly twists and turns, that man­ages to say plen­ty about redemp­tion for vio­lent men. HS

It was only a mat­ter of time until Cro­nen­berg tack­led moth­er­hood, an expe­ri­ence that already sounds like some­thing he came up with: your bel­ly dis­tends, a small par­a­sitic crea­ture feeds on your life force, your breasts emit flu­id at unex­pect­ed inter­vals, morn­ing sick­ness, pla­cen­ta, umbil­i­cal cords, etc. His can­ni­est move is to exam­ine the sir­ing of off­spring as a psy­cho­log­i­cal impulse as well as a bod­i­ly one, tak­ing the deli­cious­ly cyn­i­cal view of chil­dren as mere ves­sels for our grudges and fears.

A men­tal patient under the sway of her ther­a­pist (played by Oliv­er Reed, a vain­glo­ri­ous addi­tion to Cronenberg’s ros­ter of evil doc­tors) gen­er­ates dwarf-like spawn that scam­per about doing her vio­lent bid­ding, absorb­ing and act­ing on the deep-seat­ed hatreds amassed from a child­hood of abuse. In out­ré terms fit­ted snug­ly into the struc­ture and visu­al lan­guage of slash­er flicks, the film artic­u­lates every mom’s worst fear: an inabil­i­ty to stop one’s pride and joy from inher­it­ing their defects, dys­func­tions and trau­mas. CB

One for the ​“heads” as the kids like to say, 2002’s Spi­der sees Cro­nen­berg decamp­ing from his Toron­to nest and head­ing to the grub­by pubs and par­lours of 1950s East Lon­don for this sub­tle but deeply affect­ing tale of child­hood trau­ma and out-of-body pro­jec­tion. Ralph Fiennes plays the mum­bling, grum­bling Den­nis ​“Spi­der” Cleg, a latch-key lon­er who’s recent­ly been released from a men­tal insti­tu­tion and has decid­ed to head back to his for­ma­tive stomp­ing ground to piece togeth­er a life-chang­ing event from his youth, the title refer­ring to a web he cre­ates which stands in as the cross-cross­ing strands of his memory.

Tip­ping its hat to Alfred Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go, we watch as the abused Spi­der sees his short-tem­pered father (Gabriel Byrne) shift his atten­tions from his demure, black-haired wife (Miran­da Richard­son) to a bux­om blond strum­pet (Miran­da Richard­son), which leads to a dark act and a bru­tal decep­tion. It’s one of those films which becomes more Cro­nen­ber­gian as its plot creeps for­ward, and it adopts the director’s oft-used cin­e­mat­ic mech­a­nism of tak­ing us into the sub­jec­tive and often moral­ly unre­li­able POV of its lead char­ac­ter. DJ

Cronenberg’s twist­ed approx­i­ma­tion of a zom­bie movie doesn’t skimp on the fer­al blood­lust. But for all the vis­cer­al ter­ror of con­sump­tion and assim­i­la­tion at the hands of our des­ic­cat­ed loved ones, he takes just as much inter­est in this sick­ness as a med­ical con­di­tion with unpre­dictable symp­toms. The spread of a germ that sends the infect­ed into car­niv­o­rous fren­zies shows viral­i­ty to be an equal­ly social and bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non; the lean script bal­ances insights address­ing the macro (watch how quick­ly and ruth­less­ly the city of Mon­tréal acqui­esces to the deaths of its cit­i­zens) with the micro (the pre­hen­sile stinger tucked away in the armpit ranks among the master’s finest mutations).

Bol­stered by a per­for­mance of alter­nat­ing deter­mi­na­tion and pan­ic from Mar­i­lyn Cham­bers, mak­ing an aus­pi­cious for­ay into non-porno­graph­ic act­ing, this vision of a squishy, slimy, vom­it-cov­ered apoc­a­lypse estab­lished Canada’s most provoca­tive film­mak­er as some­one with a con­sis­tent set of the­mat­ic pre­oc­cu­pa­tions he’d con­tin­ue devel­op­ing over the next five decades – in oth­er words, an artist. CB

Based on the graph­ic nov­el of the same name by John Wag­n­er and Vince Locke, Cronenberg’s 15^th fea­ture film marked a tran­si­tion from the high­ly con­cep­tu­al sto­ries that pre­ced­ed it; this one is a straight-up white knuck­le thriller, as din­er own­er and fam­i­ly man Tom Stall finds him­self thrust into the spot­light fol­low­ing a vio­lent con­fronta­tion at his restau­rant. The atten­tion leads fig­ures from his past back to Stall, and threat­ens the life he’s built for him­self, but Stall isn’t going qui­et­ly. While A His­to­ry of Vio­lence might seem more straight­for­ward than some of Cronenberg’s pre­vi­ous work, it is no less inter­est­ed in the rela­tion­ship between the human body and vio­lence, and our infi­nite poten­tial to inflict mis­ery onto oth­ers in the name of self-preser­va­tion. HS

eXis­tenZ builds on the ideas Cro­nen­berg had intro­duced Video­drome while explor­ing themes sim­i­lar to its Hol­ly­wood coun­ter­part, The Matrix, which came out in the same year. Mul­ti­lay­ered spaces and tem­po­ral­i­ties make up the fab­ric of the tit­u­lar video game as play­ers hop from one real­i­ty to the oth­er. The game doesn’t involve a head­set, con­sole or con­troller, but rather requires the essen­tial body mod­i­fi­ca­tion ele­ments char­ac­ter­is­tic of the Cro­nen­berg canon. Play­ers enter vir­tu­al real­i­ties by fondling a squelchy ori­fice plugged into the bot­tom of their spine.

The world-build­ing is enter­tain­ing and full of excit­ing twists that keep the view­er engaged; Jen­nifer Jason Leigh is ter­rif­ic, Willem Dafoe is at his sleazi­est, and Jude Law is (checks notes) run­ning around hold­ing a gris­tle gun that uses teeth as ammu­ni­tion. The labyrinthine plot some­what resem­bles the wan­der­ing chronol­o­gy of mod­ern NPCs and the arti­fice of dia­logue-heavy RPGs, yet in satiris­ing the inter­ac­tive video game craze, the com­men­tary veers per­ilous­ly close to alarmist boomer log­ic. It’s not his most ambi­tious fea­ture, but it’s wicked­ly enter­tain­ing, mad fleshy, grotesque, horny, and ​’90s as hell. MA

If there’s one thing that David Cro­nen­berg is very good at it’s lit­er­ary adap­ta­tions, and for his take on William Bur­roughs’ scan­dalous 1959 opus, he decid­ed to draw fair­ly light­ly from the prose and the sto­ry in order to pro­duce a pic­ture that was, a) semi-coher­ent, and b) not the most obscene thing ever com­mit­ted to cel­lu­loid. It tells of a two-bit exter­mi­na­tor played by Peter Weller who descends into a long, vio­lent and con­fus­ing head trip due to the fumes he uses to kill bugs.

He assumes the guise of a secret agent and enters into a strange bat­tle against a mys­te­ri­ous out­fit known as Inter­zone Incor­po­rat­ed, and ini­tial­ly believes he must mur­der his phi­lan­der­ing wife. With­in the director’s canon of films which exca­vate the lim­its of the human body, this one pre­cedes titles like eXis­tenZ, Video­drome and A Dan­ger­ous Method in pre­sent­ing the images and dra­mas we build inside our own minds – in this instance, fuelled by tox­ic sub­stances. DJ

Shiv­ers was released the same year as JG Ballard’s nov­el High Rise, which focused on a lux­u­ry apart­ment block which descends into chaos as the building’s rigid class struc­ture breaks down. Great minds think alike – Cronenberg’s first full-length fea­ture is also set in an afflu­ent apart­ment com­plex, where a sex­u­al­ly-trans­mit­ted par­a­site caus­es the res­i­dents to turn on each oth­er in sex­u­al­ly vio­lent ways.

It’s easy to see the link between Shiv­ers and his pre­vi­ous film, Crimes of the Future, but Shiv­ers def­i­nite­ly has a lit­tle more pol­ish and aims for shock val­ue over a more cere­bral expe­ri­ence. At the time Shiv­ers was, uh, not a crit­i­cal suc­cess (and it cost Cro­nen­berg his apart­ment once his land­lord caught wind of the films he was mak­ing) but it’s a fun, gross take on the pan­dem­ic genre, and sex-crazed zom­bies are a curi­ous­ly untapped hor­ror trope. HS

The only thing bet­ter than Jere­my Irons as a prick­ly gyne­col­o­gist whose fas­ci­na­tion with the female repro­duc­tive sys­tem seems to extend beyond aca­d­e­m­ic curios­i­ty? Jere­my Irons as two prick­ly gyne­col­o­gists whose fas­ci­na­tion with the female repro­duc­tive sys­tem seems to extend beyond aca­d­e­m­ic curios­i­ty! He gives an all-timer dou­ble-duty per­for­mance as Bev­er­ly and Elliot Man­tle, doc­tors and twins iden­ti­cal in appear­ance yet com­ple­men­tary in dis­po­si­tion, form­ing a lech­er­ous yin-yang as alpha Elliot seduces their patients before pass­ing them as hand-me-downs to beta Beverly.

The arrival of the effer­ves­cent Geneviève Bujold shat­ters their frag­ile sym­bio­sis and sends Bev­er­ly into a yon­ic mania, com­mis­sion­ing cus­tom sur­gi­cal tools fit to plumb the alien vagi­nas tor­ment­ing his fevered imag­i­na­tion. As the broth­ers fran­ti­cal­ly try to reestab­lish their equi­lib­ri­um, they come to resem­ble the id and super­ego of a sin­gle psy­che split in twain, try­ing in vain to resolve itself. For Cro­nen­berg, it’s right in his sweet spot, yet anoth­er closed sys­tem dis­rupt­ed and evolv­ing in fright­ful, unnat­ur­al direc­tions. CB

Cronenberg’s remake of the schlocky 1950s sci-fi mon­ster flick sees Jeff Gold­blum giv­ing the per­for­mance of a life­time as Seth Brun­dle. The Fly kicks things off in media res, with a way­ward scientist’s mol­e­c­u­lar tele­por­ta­tion inven­tion attract­ing the atten­tion of sci­ence jour­nal­ist Veron­i­ca Quaife (Geena Davis). It’s the ​’80s – the gold­en days of mind-blow­ing prac­ti­cal effects – so trust Cro­nen­berg to deliv­er a gnarly mas­ter­piece about sci­en­tif­ic hubris and the dan­gers of progress.

Seth Brundle’s grad­ual and grotesque trans­for­ma­tion plays out as one of the most gen­uine­ly ter­ri­fy­ing slow burns in cin­e­ma his­to­ry, with vis­cer­al dis­gust under­pin­ning depth, won­der, empa­thy and pathos. And talk about on-screen chem­istry! Gold­blum and Davis are both in top form. Every scene between Seth and Veron­i­ca in the first two acts brims with buck­ets of sex­u­al ten­sion (the pair were togeth­er at the time and tied the knot a year after the film was released). It’s one of the best sci-fi hor­ror films ever made, and scores a few extra points for mak­ing sci­ence and jour­nal­ism seem like sexy pro­fes­sions. MA

James Woods gives an all-timer per­for­mance as smut ped­alling tele­vi­sion exec Max Renn in this psy­cho-thriller which has long been a sta­ple for the mid­night movie scene. After dis­cov­er­ing the dis­turb­ing snuff tele­vi­sion chan­nel known only as Video­drome, Renn becomes obsessed, seek­ing to uncov­er the secrets even as it threat­ens the life of his girl­friend Nic­ki (played by the mag­nif­i­cent Deb­bie Har­ry) and the truth about the chan­nel becomes more and more twisted.

The threat of cul­tur­al col­lapse in Amer­i­can soci­ety due to aggres­sive sex­u­al and vio­lent appetites has been a long-time obses­sion for Cro­nen­berg, but nowhere is this more appar­ent than in Video­drome, an eerie slice of the grotesque that deliv­ers a mas­ter­class in spe­cial effects and still holds up in our present hyper-con­nect­ed world of con­stant media con­sump­tion. Long live the new flesh indeed. HS

Some peo­ple get their rocks off by canoodling in bed – with them­selves or anoth­er. There are those who glean sex­u­al grat­i­fi­ca­tion from, say, sneez­ing in someone’s armpit. Crash is, in a sense, a film about the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, a steely essay that zeroes in on a group of sex­u­al out­laws search­ing the untapped cor­ners of soci­ety in to attain their erot­ic highs. Adapt­ed from JG Ballard’s 1973 nov­el of the same name, Cronenberg’s film stands as per­haps the sin­gle, tee­ter­ing apex of a cin­e­mat­ic project which has con­sis­tent­ly explored the human capac­i­ty for both phys­i­o­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal desire.

It is, at its core, the sweet tale of a group of furtive auto fetishists who are well aware that their attempts to feel good could eas­i­ly lead them to being left as a bat­tered corpse on a motor­way hard shoul­der. James Spad­er and the great Deb­o­rah Kara Unger play the Bal­lards, a hot cou­ple in a masochis­tic open mar­riage who fall in with a crew of hard­core met­al-heads who re-enact the car wrecks of beau­ti­ful Hol­ly­wood celebri­ties. Even though the moral out­rage the film caused was large­ly aired by a group of con­ser­v­a­tives who hadn’t actu­al­ly seen the film, it’s still so cre­ative­ly provoca­tive that if they had seen it, their heads may have explod­ed (see Scan­ners). DJ