There are few artists whose minds I’d love to enter and just explore for a couple of horrors more than David Cronenberg, who has built an entire career out of being a beloved menace to the art of filmmaking, a medium that he has both celebrated and dismantled with his unique and offbeat approach to storytelling, redefining the craft in his own brilliantly deranged way, for which he has been appropriately celebrated. Even films that many consider to be lesser works are still very much worth our time, as evident in the form of eXistenZ, which occupies a strange place in the director’s body of work, coming after arguably his most celebrated period in which he made films like The Fly, Naked Lunch and Crash, but before he would move onto more esoteric and unconventional works like those he’d produce going into the 21st century, this film acting as something of a bridge between key eras in his output. It also happens to be one of his most relevant films in terms of the subjects that it was exploring, with the story taking place in the near future, where humanity has become entranced by a new form of video games in which they are plunged into virtual worlds, which begin to envelop them in more ways than one. The focus is on Allegra Geller, a viruoso game designer who finds herself caught in between factions – on one side she has to endure the feuding companies that are trying to dominate the industry, while on the other, she is confronted with the persistent threat of the Realists, a group of militants committed to protesting (often in violent ways) against the predominance of virtual reality as more than just a medium of entertainment. Accompanied by Ted Pikul, a publicist who has never participated in any kind of game, Allegra seeks to find answers, plunging the two of them into her latest creation. One of the definitive works of Cronenberg’s career, albeit one that is still oddly quite underpraised considering its ability to look forward towards several ideas that would become eerily relevant in later decades, eXistenZ is a masterful example of what the director can do when allowed to explore his interests, which are unsurprisingly fertile ground for a strange, offbeat science fiction horror that explores several very prescient themes.

Many have pointed out that eXistenZ was Cronenberg’s return to original writing, since he has been known to veer towards adaptations (where he’d return soon afterwards), where he can experiment with existing texts, refining them to fit his own particular vision. It’s intriguing to note how the previous instance of him working from a story he conceived was Videodrome, and the one that followed was nearly a quarter of a century later, in the form of Crimes of the Future, his first original screenplay since this film. Cronenberg has rebuffed any idea that the films are related to each other, but in addition to existing within what we can consider to be the same nightmarish version of reality, there are interesting connections that bind them together, mostly in how these are stories about the negotiation between humanity and artifice. Cronenberg has always had a first grasp on the culture, telling stories that are familiar and challenging in equal measure, and not being afraid to push boundaries when required. Throughout his work (not only these films, but the majority of his directorial endeavours), there have been some eclectic themes explored – but one element in particular binds them all together, and it’s the most surprising: the concept of being human. This is what drives Cronenberg to explore the depths of human horror in as much detail as he does, since even at its most repulsive, there is a deep humanity pulsating through these films. eXistenZ in particular examines how we are so steadily trying to remove ourselves from reality and instead inhabit other realms solely because it is far easier to control technology than it is the natural world. However, for a film that was considered profoundly speculative a quarter of a century ago, it is remarkably relevant, since the existence of entities like artificial intelligence (which has shockingly become a very prominent part of our daily lives, almost to the point of being inescapable), virtual reality and social media, where we can hide behind anonymous avatars representing our ideal version of ourselves, have rendered the ideas the director is exploring astonishingly resonant, and deeply unsettling, especially in how he centres the story on both the celebration and critique of society’s unusual relationship with corporeality.

Despite his films being extremely grotesque and often quite challenging in more ways than anyone can describe, Cronenberg has managed to recruit an impressive roster of collaborators on both sides of the camera. Many actors feel drawn to his work, since he is not likely to just resort to the same techniques when it comes to writing characters – anyone who collaborates with him can be assured that what they’re going to be asked to do is far out of their comfort zone, which is a challenge that several brilliant actors have been more than capable of enduring, and the result being career-best work from several of them. eXistenZ is anchored by two key performances, both of whom are working with the director for the first time – Jennifer Jason Leigh (at the tail-end of her landmark run in the 1990s that established her as an auteur darling) is the video game designer reckoning with the fact that her own creation may be deeply flawed, while Jude Law takes advantage of his youthful energy to play a deliriously oblivious young man who seems to lack the foresight to know just where his ignorance is going to become a problem. They’re fantastic leads, and bring this film to life brilliantly, capturing the many nuances of these characters in ways that we find consistently quite surprising. However, its the supporting cast where some of the more memorable performances reside – Willem Dafoe is as reliable as ever, playing another morally corrupt villain, and who takes advantage of every moment he is on screen, while Don McKellar, Callum Keith Rennie, Ian Holm and Christopher Eccleston make intriguing contributions of their own, taking on eccentric characters that seem quite simple at first (and who are usually paired with some truly questionable accent work), but have a deep complexity that tends to guide the narrative in very interesting ways. We may not always understand what each of these characters ultimately represents, but they do serve a purpose, and Cronenberg makes it very clear what he is intending to say with this film, which is a far more nuanced affair than we’d expect at a glance.

Cronenberg is truly one of the only filmmakers who is at his best when he is entirely left to his own devices. He has flirted with mainstream fare on occasion, but his greatest achievements are those when he is given carte blanche to bring his vision to life on his own terms, without interference from anyone other than those with whom he believes he can have a strong artistic relationship. When it comes to this film and what it sets out to achieve, there is no way around it – eXistenZ is a disgusting film, a visually repulsive curio that exudes a kind of grotesque energy that is impossible to put into words. Cronenberg has been celebrated as a pioneer of body horror, but until we are in the throes of one of his films and able to embrace the sheer absurdity that drives this narrative, we can’t ever truly understand the extent to which he is not only able to go, but also gleefully willing to embrace. Yet, it’s an unforgettable work, with a visual aesthetic that draws heavily from the media being produced in the late 1990s, particularly the lo-fi approach to video games, which had a very distinct appearance. It may not be the technical marvel that we saw in The Matrix (another film about simulated versions of reality), but it has an unconventional charm in its imagery that is so distinctly the product of Cronenberg that absolutely anyone could recognise him as the hand guiding this film. What we find interesting is that eXistenZ is a film about the human body, but it makes its most interesting statements not through what it shows, but rather by implication. Less is more with this film, and Cronenberg splendours in the ambiguity that drives the narrative – this is a film that examines every crevice of the human body without explicitly showing anything, with the director remarking on how this is a film essentially without any sex scenes, but where there is somehow sex in every scene, a contradiction that makes perfect sense once we see the story in practice. It’s a peculiar film, but one that knows exactly what to do to draw the audience in, and the visuals alone are enough to complement the unsettling narrative in a way that is nothing if not entirely engaging.

Every ounce of this film is quintessentially Cronenberg, from the story to the visual aesthetic to the pitch-black humour, and it is unmistakably the product of the director in his element. It is his final entry into the canon of works he produced in the 20th century, a fact that is very much reflected throughout the film – there has never been a film that captures the last vestiges of the era as much as this one, to the point where I’d even dare to call it the most important piece of media produced on the subject of technology of the 1990s, at least in terms of how it predicts some very important developments that we are seeing were nothing if not entirely relevant. However, even if we divorce the film from its prescient approach to the subject matter, we find that eXistenZ is a bold, unflinching satire that is as shocking as it is hilarious – the dark humour feels very appropriate, since these characters exist in a heightened reality, one in which everything is slightly off-centre and unconventional in a way that is mentally exhausting but still very much worth the effort, since we’re witnessing the creation of a true artistic madman, someone who pushes boundaries in a way that can rarely be described as anything other than wholeheartedly original. There are many moments where Cronenberg leans into the inherent madness that occupies the lives of these characters, who represent something much more profound, without being layered in subtext that removes the more enticing sheen that covers the film. It’s delightfully irreverent and frequently quite unsettling, but never anything other than genuinely exciting, with the small details being so intricately woven together with the bold swings. We have to watch the film multiple times to catch every small reference and plot development. Vague as it could be, while also having a genuine sincerity that feels so much more engaging than we would expect, eXistenZ is a masterful entry into Cronenberg’s impressive body of work, and one of the key texts in the director’s iconic oeuvre