David Cronenberg

Naked Lunch (1991)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Youtube Streaming, December 2020) I won’t even try to explain the plot of Naked Lunch: it’s bizarre enough that it probably wouldn’t make sense anyway. But this reinterpretation of William S. Burroughs’ novel is one that relies more on scenes and visuals than overall plot for impact. What we do have here is an exterminator possibly driven to hallucinations through the bug powder dust he inhales. Or perhaps he’s a secret agent taking orders from insect-like creatures. Or maybe he’s a writer in North Africa, living in a science-fiction Interzone in-between aliens and secret operatives. Maybe he’s bisexual, or maybe insectsexual. Maybe he’s being directed by a harsh dark-haired woman, or maybe she’s just a man in elaborate disguise. Maybe he meets his dead wife’s doppelganger (albeit with a better and curlier haircut), or maybe she’s the same person. Maybe… yeah, maybe. A good cast (Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Roy Scheider and, wait, is that Monique Mercure?) anchors the film in dubiously tactile reality, but don’t take anything for granted. After all, this is a film in which the protagonist’s typewriter gets an erection during a sex scene and if that doesn’t get you interested, then you were never meant to see it anyway. Under David Cronenberg’s typical direction, Naked Lunch is wonderfully weird even thirty years later – delightfully close to Science Fiction while also being recognizable as a psychological thriller if you choose to be a stick in the mud about the film’s genre affiliations. I’m glad I tried to watch the film and bounced off of it in the late 1990s – I had a much better time revisiting it now that my expectations were lowered and calibrated for maximum eccentricity. But I will admit that it’s not to everyone’s taste. Incidentally, the film inspired its perfect soundtrack three years later: Bomb the Bass’s Bug Powder Dust.

Nightbreed (1990)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, May 2020) There is something far more interesting than usual in Nightbreed when compared to most other horror films of that era. It has authentic sympathy for the monsters that would be antagonists in other horror films, and much of the protagonist’s journey is joining and protecting those monsters from human opponents. (As per Wikipedia, there’s an entire queer subtext to Nightbreed that flew over my head upon watching the film.) When writer-director Clive Barker set out to make the film, he was aiming for a menagerie of creatures on par with Star Wars, and a quasi-mythological resonance to the story. He doesn’t quite get there, but his intentions certainly resonate in the final result. The version I was the much-decried original cut of the film rather than the more definitive “Cabal Cut,” so quite a bit got lost—The serial killer subplot does make the film far trashier than it should have been and the result isn’t quite as interesting as the creatures it features. As an American backwoods gothic, Nightbreed brings to mind an approach not dissimilar to Guillermo del Toro’s love of monsters and empathy in approaching the other. If you’re looking for another reason to watch the film, there’s David Cronenberg playing the antagonist, which is good for a chuckle or two. Still, and perhaps to the chagrin of Nightbreed’s considerable cult following, this film is more one of missed opportunities than outright success—it doesn’t quite work, and I’m not sure that even a recut version would be significantly better.

The Brood (1979)

The Brood (1979)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, March 2020) For David Cronenberg fans, The Brood is worth a few moments of interest. It was clearly part of Cronenberg’s professionalization, as he became an experienced filmmaker through the Canadian Tax Shelter era. It’s, by Cronenberg’s own admission, clearly influenced by his own divorce—down to casting an actress that looked like his ex-wife and having her character strangled in the film’s climax. And we haven’t even delved into the distasteful premise of the film, dealing equally with suggestions of child abuse, body horror, psychological trauma manifesting itself through monstrous creatures, and a birthing/licking climax that pushes the disgust needle all the way to “yuck.” As usual for early Cronenberg, it’s for a very specific audience—and there’s no guarantee that even the gorehounds will like it, considering the overall atmosphere of dread that permeates the film: there’s no humour here, and a surprising amount of thematic depth in how you can choose to interpret the material. Hey, if you’ve made it through Rabid and Shivers and Scanners, why not complete the early-Cronenberg set?

Rabid (1977)

Rabid (1977)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2020) Considering that the current international headlines are all about a global pandemic, watching writer-director David Cronenberg’s Rabid isn’t so much mindless fun right now. This being said, even if Rabid is definitely about a zombie epidemic going out of control, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is unlikely to attain the wild body-horror madness of Cronenberg’s take on a (now) well-worn trope—by the time the heroine (played by porn star Marilyn Chambers) has a phallic appendage growing out of her armpit and motivating her to feed on human blood, well, I feel confident that we’re some way away from even the most horrible reality. What I liked most about the film, however, wasn’t its horror aspect as much as setting and atmosphere—loudly and proudly taking place in late-1970s Montréal, it features eye-catching details of the era and a fun “feels like my childhood” quality to an otherwise humdrum story. But unless you were born within three years and two hundred kilometres from Rabid’s production, I can’t quite promise the same kind of inherent interest. Otherwise, it’s an early Cronenberg, tackling a now-overexposed topic and doing it in a typically Cronenbergian way—which either counts as an advantage or a distraction.

Shivers (1975)

Shivers (1975)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, January 2020) I would expect a mid-1970s horror film to be fairly tame, but that’s not a word to apply to writer-director David Cronenberg’s early-effort Shivers. Narratively, it’s basic horror stuff—scientific experiments, parasites, violently-sex-obsessed victims, gruesome deaths, an epidemic raging out of control: We’ve seen all of this before and since then. But Cronenberg tackles this project with youthful energy, and the film is far more aggressive in its execution than you’d think, even with unconvincing special-effects work and muddy nighttime cinematography. For Cronenberg fans, it’s an opportunity to see him work with the raw materials that he would later refine: the off-putting sexual content, the gory body horror, the sense of a normal situation terrifyingly turning out of control. It’s a bit of a laugh to see such a horror film explicitly set in Montréal (specifically on L’île des soeurs), with very typically 1970s Quebecker background actors. So, Shivers may or may not be familiar, but it’s rather well done for its budget class and technical limitations of the time. Not essential viewing (except for Cronenberg fans and anyone interested in tax-shelter-era Canadian exploitation films) but still watchable.

Last Night (1998)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, January 2020) I can name at least three “the end of the world is coming and here is how the characters react” movies in recent memory—Melancholia, These Final Hours and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World—but Last Night predates all of them, and still offers its own unique take on the premise. Shot and set in debris-strewn Toronto streets, writer-director Don McKellar’s film feels like an exceptionally Canadian take on cozy catastrophes: the rioting and panic having taken place earlier and offstage (aside from a few brief moments of crowd craziness midway through the film), we’re left with characters reacting with dignity and black humour to the impending apocalypse as the clock counts down to the end. Some indulge in hedonism, checking off their bucket lists, while others retire home to pray. Meanwhile, our lead couple (McKellar and a captivating Sandra Oh) improbably connects despite very different plans. Add TTC streetcars, some French-Canadian dialogue with Geneviève Bujold, the eye-catching Sarah Polley and a rare (but dignified) acting performance by director David Cronenberg and you’ve got one of the most Canadian of all 1990s Canadian movies. I enjoyed Last Night far more than I thought I would, but then again, I have a soft spot for that exact premise, and it’s substantially funnier than I expected. The only thing that marred my experience is that Canadian Cable TV channel Encore must have dredged their copy of the film from their old TMN/Moviepix archives because the transfer here is markedly low-resolution with faded colours and standard aspect ratio—not a good way to present a good film.

Scanners (1981)

Scanners (1981)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(YouTube Streaming, December 2019) It took me far too long to watch Scanners, but it was worth the wait. Partially filmed in nearby Montréal, this early David Cronenberg film has nearly everything that’s great and terrible about Cronenberg’s work. It’s imaginative, as humans with superpowers hunt each other in a delightfully down-to-earth circa-1980 Montréal. It’s wild, as most people will first remember the shocking exploding head that comes much earlier in the picture than anybody expects, or the psychic battle finale that anticipates a whole anime subgenre. It’s crammed with interesting details, creating a sense of reality far greater than its meagre budget should allow. Unfortunately, Scanners is infamously undisciplined—as a result of production constraints, the script was reportedly rewritten on-the-fly, leading to significant lulls in interest, scenes that aren’t as strongly built as they should be, and tangents that aren’t strengthened. It’s got energy but little rigour, and if the science fiction/horror hybrid can be impressive in a blunt-force kind of way, it’s also incredibly disappointing as well—a stronger script would not have undermined the assets of the film. Nonetheless, I can see why Scanners has so impressed generations of filmgoers: it’s striking enough to be memorable, and not only for its infamous exploding-head sequence.

A Dangerous Method (2011)

A Dangerous Method (2011)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, May 2019) Now here’s a subject matter you don’t see every day: A slickly made film exploring the evolution of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung, and the woman between them. A Dangerous Method is clearly an actor’s showcase: In keeping with late-career David Cronenberg’s work, it’s low on gore, violence or overdone drama, but no less intriguing through its solid look at the roots of modern psychoanalysis. Even if you don’t happen to put too much stock in Freudian (or Jungian) theory, there’s some fun in seeing Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender playing two titans of psychology, with Keira Knightley as a patient who becomes something more. (She especially good earlier on, as she plays several shades of hysteria.) The historical recreation is polished—aside from some dodgy CGI depicting a nautical approach to New York City. A Dangerous Method has an unusual, highly intellectual subject matter and I could use more of these kinds of film even if they’re best appreciated in a very specific mood.

Dead Ringers (1988)

Dead Ringers (1988)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, January 2019) I’m not sure whether it’s a disappointment or a compliment to say “Wow, that wasn’t as unpleasant as I expected” at the end of writer/director David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers. I suppose that it depends on what you think of Cronenberg’s movies and his reputation as a master of body horror. What seems like faint praise can be interpreted as disappointment if you hold the view that Cronenberg movies should be as extreme as possible, then go back to praise considering that Cronenberg’s reputation is such that he creates a sense of dread even before we start watching the movie, preparing our imaginations to all sorts of terrors yet to be experienced and perhaps more effective than if they had been shown on the screen. Of course, “not as unpleasant as I expected” is a relative term and jaded Cronenberg viewers will interpret it differently than more mainstream audiences—Dead Ringers remains a movie with sexual deception, torture-like gynecological tools (ick!), drug abuse, fatally codependent relationships, evisceration and a body count. “Not as unpleasant as I expected” may simply mean that we’ve been spared horrors such as a fifteen-minute one-shot of the film’s most sordid business. Everyone’s mileage will vary. Jeremy Irons stars as twins working as gynecologists and is suitably creepy in his dual roles, while Geneviève Bujold plays the unusual client that divides them. Dead Ringers’ sense of unease is displayed early on and never dispels, although it does prepare us for horrors more extreme than what we actually see. (For once, the female character escapes unscathed—and may even unwittingly deliver the killing blow.) It may not be as crazily imaginative as Cronenberg’s most unhinged movies such as Scanners and Videodrome, but it’s slicker, better controlled and probably a bit cleverer in the way it plays with unease rather than outright disgust. This being said, I suspect that Dead Ringers is more effective for viewers who think they know what to expect than relative newcomers to Cronenberg, and that male viewers will have more muted reactions than female ones.

The Dead Zone (1983)

The Dead Zone (1983)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, November 2016) I’m writing this a few days after the close of the 2016 American presidential election, in a haze where I’m not sure what’s real and what isn’t. It’s not necessarily the best time to tackle The Dead Zone, or maybe exactly the right time. Here, an unassuming teacher gains the power to foretell the future and see the past, leading to a complicated life and terrifying visions of what would happen if a local loon became president. Best time or worst time? I’ll tell you in four years. Until then, there’s an impossibly young Christopher Walken’s strangely compelling performance to admire and Martin Sheen as an unhinged politician that contrasts with his latter President Barlett. I’ve read the Stephen King novel too long ago to be specific about the details, but The Dead Zone seems to play loose with the details of the original story, which is not necessarily a bad thing. While writer/director David Cronenberg’s film can hit a few rough patches at times, with ambitions exceeding the means at its disposal, The Dead Zone remains engrossing throughout … and suddenly seems like a newly relevant film at a time when we’re grasping at any attempt to predict the future.

The Fly (1986)

The Fly (1986)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, June 2013) As amazing at it may seem, I had actually forgotten that The Fly was directed by David Cronenberg.  Don’t worry, though: within moments, it all came rushing back… as did the memories of being utterly terrified by bits of the film at age 12.  Seen from the perspective of an adult, The Fly isn’t as terrifying at a purely visual level.  It is, however, quite a bit more insidious about its body horror and the gradual devolution of its character into a mindless beast.  Jeff Goldblum can still look upon this as one of his most defining performances as the mutating scientist, while Geena Davis strikes just the right notes as a journalist who finds herself with a lot more grief than she expected chasing a good story.  What really doesn’t work so well is John Getz’s character arc going from creepy ex-boyfriend to shotgun-wielding saviour.  Cronenberg’s craft means that the film still, more than twenty-five years later, works quite well despite analog effects and sometimes-torpid pacing.  The Fly is worth a look, and not just as part of Cronenberg’s filmography.

Cosmopolis (2012)

Cosmopolis (2012)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Video on-demand, March 2013) The kindest thing one can say about Cospomolis is that after more than a decade spent in the wilderness of criminal realism, it’s good to see writer/director David Cronenberg go back (even partially) to weirdness and his longstanding preoccupation with the dehumanization of modern society.  From the first few highly-stylised moments, it’s obvious that Cosmopolis is not going to be your average plot-driven thriller.  Our protagonist may be a rich businessman driving around with the simple goal of getting a haircut, but the artificiality of the film is underlined at every second through fake visuals, elliptical dialogue obviously copied-and-pasted from Don Delillo’s short source novel and performances so devoid of normal emotion to make us question whether we’re truly seeing humans on-screen.  For Robert Pattinson, this isn’t a good break from the Twilight series: His performance demands such a sense of detachment that we don’t get anything resembling emotion from him, and so no perceptible shift away from a hundred-years-old dispassionate vampire.  (This is called typecasting.)  It’s a film built to dwell upon the artificiality of life among the elite and it sort-of-works, but it sure feels like it takes a long time to make its points about the coldness of technology, capitalism and/or driving around in circles.  It offers mildly thoughtful material, a few nude scenes, unexplainable plot points and an atmosphere that’s quite unlike any other film in recent memory.  As a thriller, it’s a flat one-thing-after-another framework on which to hang ideas and intercutting monologues (the characters speak a lot but rarely respond to each other) –it’s a lot more interesting as a high-concept film with strung-together sound-bites.  Still, it’s not uninteresting to watch even as an art-house experiment, and as would befit an intellectual thought-piece, a few lines may even stick in mind once the film’s performances fade away.

Videodrome (1983)

Videodrome (1983)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On cable TV, March 2012) The media landscape has changed so much in thirty years that there was a real risk that Videodrome, in tackling the TV anxieties of the early eighties, would feel fatally outdated three decades later. In some ways, that’s true: at a time where gory execution video-clips are never farther than a Google search away, the premise of satellite channel piracy uncovering a snuff TV show doesn’t quite have the same power to make audiences shiver. The average moviegoer now has effortless access to a vastly more complicated media diet in which can be blended the worst perversions: Videodrome really scratches the surface of the horrors out there as we realize that we now all have access to the same. But there’s a lot more to Videodrome than a treatise on the dangers of satellite TV and a charming throwback to early-eighties techno-jargon: As the body horror of the film’s second half kicks in, director David Cronenberg (who, a long time ago, still made horror movies) truly uncaps the techno-surrealism that still makes the film worth a look. Videodrome still deserves its cult status as an unnerving piece of bizarre horror, perhaps even more so now that cathode-ray tubes are receding in the past. The visuals, as imperfect as they were in a pre-CGI age, still have a sting and the shattering of the protagonist’s reality is good for a few kernels of terror. What really doesn’t work all that well is the last act of the film, which disarms the film’s increasing sense of paranoia and ends up burying itself in pointlessness. Videodrome, even today, is more interesting for its potential rather than its execution. Oh well; at least James Woods is captivating as the protagonist, and Toronto gets a pretty good turn in the background. A stronger third act would have been a good way to wrap up the film, but as a cult classic, it probably doesn’t need any improvement.

Blood & Donuts (1995)

Blood & Donuts (1995)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, June 2009): The most frustrating thing about this low-budget Canadian horror film shot and set in Toronto is how uneven it is: Too often settling for a muddy drama somehow featuring a vampire protagonist, it occasionally flickers brightly with a moment of interest, only to fade again. It’s self-consciously ridiculous (David Cronenberg plays a local mob boss with boot-scratching gusto), and yet it also tries to have it both ways as a character study, especially near the unsatisfying ending. (Here’s a hint: Don’t try make us go “Oooh nooo he’s dead” over the film’s most annoying character.) But what do I know? The film was nominated for a bunch of Genies, including for the Best Screenplay award. It’s a bit of a shame to see that lead Helene Clarkson’s IMDB filmography tapered off shortly after this film, because her charm is one of the things holding the rest of the film together. Otherwise, well, fans of Canadian horror will fill a big hole in their cinematography by watching this, and fans of unusual vampire films may as well give it a look.