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Overall Rating
 Awesome: 35.33%
Worth A Look: 42.67%
Average: 13.33%
Pretty Bad: 4.67%
Total Crap: 4%
13 reviews, 72 user ratings
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| eXistenZ |
by Chris Parry
"Eraserhead meets The Thirteenth Floor. Yawn."

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You've got to give credit to a filmmaker that likes to do things a little bit differently. Different is good. But different for a reason is better. Existenz is the kind of flick that you constantly expect to get way poignant, way original, way introspective... and all you get is a video game with mutant puppets and a lot of pus.But hey, video games with mutant puppets and pus aren't exactly a dime a dozen, so there's at least something to keep your mind occupied.
David Cronenberg likes to go all mutey on our asses. He's an 'out there' director who is loath to just tell a straight story. He doesn't make awful films. But for some reason he appears in a lot of them. Remember Cronenberg's cameo in The Stupid's? Or Last Night, To Die For, Extreme Measures, Trial By Jury, Night Breed? He's also in the upcoming Chris Lambert flick Resurrection.
Why does he make these crummy cameos? Because he can. He's Cronenberg; the man behind Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, and The Brood. He can do whatever the fuck he wants.
Except of course make a film without the help of Canadian Government funding. Despite making movies since the late 60's, despite having some fine flicks under his belt, Cronenberg still has the hand out. Like Atom Egoyan, he hides behind the subsidy and tax credit system of Canada to make films that he can consider art, without needing to worry about butts on seats.
Is this a bad thing? Ask one of the many Canadian up'n'coming filmmakers how they feel about being handed scraps while Cronenberg and Egoyan are handed the bulk of funds available.
Though at least in Existenz, DC has tried to bring both sides of the audience, arties and farties, together. This is a film that reeks of Cronenberg's usual fascination with the macabre, but also tries to inject a storyline that can be understood without breaking your brain.
Jen Jason Leigh is a video game designer who has a groundbreaking video game in testing mode. But yikes! The "realists" are not real happy about JJL's fantasy world and have the assassins out to get her and her clueless marketing assistant "bodyguard", Jude Law.
What follows is a cavalcade of freaks, quirky characters and every Canadian actor there is with the exception of Mike Myers, Martin Short and Jim Carrey (read: the ones nobody knows).
Now, with every virtual reality themed feature that happens there's one glaring similarity. The "what is the game, what's real" crisis. Existenze takes that to a new level, though not necessarily a more effective one.Is it good? Yeah, it's okay. Is it scary? Not at all. If anything can sum this film up in one word, that word is "gooey" - and that's all.
del.icio.us
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1322&reviewer=1 originally posted: 11/28/99 14:40:36
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USA 23-Apr-1999
UK 30-Apr-1999
Australia 11-Nov-1999
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