From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie eXistenZ released in 1999.
Starring:
Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ian Holm
Directed by:
David Cronenberg
Genre:
Action, Horror, Sci-Fi
Rating:
R
Budget:
CAD 31,000,000 (estimated)
About 21 million US Dollars in 1999
IMBD Rating is currently:
6.8
My Rating:
8.5
The Synopsis is:
A virtual reality game creator, Allegra Gellar and her assumed security guy, Ted Pikul explore her new game while fighting for their lives.
Enjoyment:
When this film came out, I overlooked it because I thought that it would be too dark for me and it was labeled as a horror film.
The tone of the poster is very eerie, I didn’t want anything to do with it.
Over the years, I heard so many recommendations for the film, especially when I talk, listen, read, and watch anything about the films I like about virtual reality.
So I finally, blocked out a slot of time, in the daytime, when I was feeling really secure that I wouldn’t get freaked out easily and watched the film.
And to be honest, there was no need for all of that, because it wasn’t scary to me and I loved it.
It’s so up my alley. It’s not a horror in my opinion or even an action film, but it’s more of a sci-fi thriller.
Loved it.
*THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING, LETTING YOU KNOW THAT THE REST OF THE REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. *
Pacing:
At one hour and 37 minutes, the length is OK, but the film feels much longer. That is because the pacing is awful in the beginning, but I think it's worth putting up with for the pay off in the last 30 minutes of the story.
The slow parts really works during the re-watch of this film.
You start to notice some details you hadn’t in the first time.
Story:
The story matter of virtual reality was a very popular genre topic for a while, especially, just before the year 2000 and the threat of the Y2K virus looming among the people. A complete wipe out of all operating systems on New Year's Day 2000.
A few films that to come to mind are The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor both released in the same year as this film in 1999.
The film is also reminiscent of Total Recall, the coloring, the entrance into the eXistenZ game, and questioning reality at the end of the film.
But what makes this story a lot different from the others is the David Cronenberg stamp, he explored in his earlier film, Videodrome released in 1983 dealing with the subject of yet another new media at the time, video, which was changing the landscape of entertainment in the early 80’s.
The first time I watched the film, I got a strong sense that this was an anti-virtual world film because it is revealed that the two main characters, Allegra and Ted, are actually pro-real world agents.
Pro-real worlders want humans to not be corrupted by escaping into technology. But their tactics are violent and inhumane.
The Pro-real worlders aren’t good guys. They are more like terrorists.
And moreover, the film doesn’t make a case for their point of view to be seen. It just presents a story with them in it.
I watched a few reviews of this film that really took a personal offense to the connections of this movie to modern gaming.
The pulse of this story is the idea: what if virtual reality was so realistic, you didn’t know if it were real or not. That is the basic premise of the story.
This was not a commentary about gaming. Gaming was just a brilliant vehicle to present the idea.
Many movies of the time viewed virtual reality as a fantasy space for humans… to create worlds as we see fit.
The fantastic adventures of Star Trek the Next Generation’s holodeck comes to mind.
But the most logical use of virtual reality would be to play incredible games in the first person point of view.
This film is truly ahead of its time because gaming has become more of what this film is envisioning as far as the widespread use and more realistic graphics.
Technology in general is catching up to Cronenberg's vision as we see more and more realistic computer graphics of humans and worlds.
A little off topic, but there is also has a spooky image of people completely absorbed in a flat, glowing box screen in their hand and using their fingers to navigate it.
This film was made in 1999. Were those 2017 smartphones?
The first smartphone was invented in 1992 and released in 1994, but the smartphone as we know it was first released by apple in 2007 unofficially referred as the iPhone 2G.
In that very scene, the characters aren’t moving and conversing with each other, but are absorbed in their technology. This film predicted what we as a society are doing right now as person to person, real world relationships are diminishing into technological interfaces.
The other ingenious story idea that I loved was having the technology actually be living things. Even the bone gun or grizzle gun bleeds. Everything is alive.
In the film the technology factory is a farm raising amphibious creatures for their nervous systems to use in the meta flesh game pods. They are also using them to make undetectable weapons made of organic substances.
Cronenberg mentioned in an interview, and I am paraphrasing, that the biological technology is an extension of human use, like an arm or a leg. Technology comes from man so it is alive.
We see that as the pods that the gamers in the film use are fleshy looking, make sounds as they are being played and hook directly into the human body with what looks like umbilical cords.
Allegra explains that there is a symbiotic nature between the user and the organic game module. Her reaction to her pod is that it is alive as it is tapped right into the nervous system.
The title of the film has 3 meanings.
o Existential transcendence, the existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level.
o Extend existence (a character says you could live up to 500 in the game.)
o Exist Ends, the end of physical existence as more people depend on virtual worlds.
Many people compare this film to the Matrix, which is the most popular movie about the subject of virtual reality.
The biggest difference between the two is that the Matrix is a world that humans are involuntarily imprisoned by technology.
In this film, humans want to be imprisoned inside the technology to escape reality. They feel that inside the technology they will engage excitement and heroism. At one point Allegra refers to the “real world” as boring.
Another big difference between the two films is that we know when the characters are in the real world and when they are in the matrix. But in this film you know which world you are in, but we have no knowledge of what the real world looks like.
Cronenberg pays homage to Philip K. Dick, for his contribution to writing about alternative worlds. Allegra and Ted grab some fast food from Perky Pats. It’s referencing, Dick's 1965 novel, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
Challenge:
The challenge is very tricky because we are not given the true situation that is happening in the film. So I guess the challenge in the film is figuring out what is going on.
It sounds like it would be a bad thing, but it is the kinds thing that keeps you thinking about the film long after you’ve seen it.
The film starts out with a focus group meeting to test the game eXistenZ by the company Antenna Research. The game creator, Allegra Geller is leading a first wave test enclave of 12 slave meta flesh game pods and their users into the game, hooked up into her queen pod.
It seems simple enough to follow. I will call this layer of reality the eXistenZ world.
There is an attempt on Allegra’s life during the test and she is pulled out of the eXistenZ game.
Allegra plays the eXistenz game again with Ted Pikul.
Within that game they play another game.
And at the end while in the eXistenZ world we discover that it was really a game when Allegra exits to what I am calling the tranCendenZ world, where the tranCendenZ game is being tested by the company PIlgramage.
So there are 4 layers of reality in this film.
o The tranCendenZ by PIlgrmage world.
o The eXistenZ by Antena world.
o The eXistenZ Game World
o The game within a game World
One interesting thing to note is that the TranCendenZ world of the TranCendenZ by PIlgrimage, has a religious connotation especially tying in the church where in this test enclave is happening.
So the big surprise at the end was that the eXistenZ world where the film beings is actually not reality but part of a game world.
However, when re-watching the film, you notice that we are given several clues that the eXistenZ world at some point is a game.
There is no news or TV in any of the worlds. And there is a very plain labeling of things. Allegra even says to Ted, “you’re labeled.”
More than twice Allegra says in the eXistenZ world, the only way she can know that everything is ok with the game is that she play eXistenZ with someone friendly. She asks Ted, “Are you friendly, or are you not.” as a game character would do.
When Ted is rescuing Allegra in the car, the background is a fake background, using a rear screen projection indicating that the world is not real. Ted says, do you expect us to get a port installed at an country gas station. They go to a gas station with those very words on it. A few moments later Allegra is feeling her environment, and checking out how things looks while she smiles, indicating that the world is not real.
Empathy:
The empathy was a little tough for me because it changes so much. At first Ted seems is our eyes and our avatar in the game. Because he is a newbie to gaming, Allegra tells Ted all of the things that we need to know to understand the world better.
He says the things we are thinking and wondering about all of the strange things that are happening. He is drawn to finish the game as one might be drawn to see the end of a movie to find out what happens in the adventure.
In the middle of the film when Ted finds Allegra at the trout farm, she acts robotic like a game character. It’s then that more than ever Ted is our guy. He’s likable and we want him to succeed at whatever it is he’s doing. But the film takes the rug from under us and flips the concentration of the empathy for a few minutes to Allegra.
And Allegra is really a hard character to like because she is selfish, arrogant, and extremely manipulative. The best way to explain who Allegra is, is that she seems like a drug pusher seducing us into her game, herself hooked on her own drug.
When Allegra and Ted are revealed to be anti-gaming players in the proposed real world of the game TranCendeZ by PIlgrimage, they seem cold, odd, and detached, like game characters. When they express their mission call, they have no expressions a few seconds before as if they were robots. It’s hyperrealistic and unnatural.
We are just onlookers, wondering if perhaps the audience was meant to be the user in the game. It feels interactive, but unfortunately the empathy is pretty much gone by then.
However, with the information we learn by the end, all of the things we see in the game and the two main characters tie in wonderfully.
Since these characters are actually pro-real world agents, their thoughts don’t hide well in the game. What could have been a utopia, in the game world is now a putrid diseased and gross place, because the users think badly of the game. They detest the game so aesthetics of the game is unpleasant.
The game test is being held at an old church and not a sanitary lab in a company building. There is nothing really clean or sterile.
At one point Ted says he doesn’t want to be there, he says he's worried about their bodies in the real world, and he pauses the game out of fear, unsure what is real.
Ted also describes the connection to the game as a penetration, which he is afraid of. And I took it that he was afraid of the connection to technology penetrating his mind, penetrating reality.
Which makes sense, since there is a limitation of free will inside the game. Characters are being given involuntary compulsions as the pro-real worlders do not want to be in the game.
Technical:
The film looks like a very gritty practical effect filled movie. But surprisingly enough, there were some CGI components in the film, but used sparingly.
This little creature was not too bad for 1999.
Most of the others are practical effects and all of the gross trout farm scenes along with the meta flesh pods were all practical in their glory.
The gristle gun feels a little Giger-esque. It a great creative idea reminiscent of the handgun in the film Videodrome.
There was some chromakeying to bring the Chinese restaurant and the factory in the same scene. They were actually 50 miles apart.
The edited transitions were pretty cool. A nice blend from scene to scene. It’s an artistic film without the pretentiousness. There’s a lot of very detailed sets and incredible backgrounds that really make you feel that the world were fully explored.
Great sound design. The sound of the game pods in use sounds very erotic and I bought that they were alive.
The score was very dark and mysterious and perfect for allowing the audience to peel back the layers of this great story.
Performances:
Jennifer Jason Leigh was great as Allegra Geller.
Jude Law played Ted Pikul very naturally. He played the character pretty likable. He has a Canadian accent in the film, but then I noticed that his accent changes into his normal English accent in his last scene.
Ian Holm, Willem Dafoe and Christopher Eccleston were vastly underused, and what’s even funnier was that the characters that they played even mentions it.
Best:
I really liked the film from beginning to end, but I think that the wacky ending really did it for me and the wonderful afterglow of thought it provides.
And I must include the creative construction of the gristle gun scene. It was fantastic to see Pikul put it together like a puzzle from the bones of a food dish. How creative. I loved it so much.
The ending:
The ending is brilliant. You could question the blatant possibility that the game isn’t over when a character in the film asks, are we still in the game.
Are they still in the game?
It’s up to the viewer to decide.
o The TranCendenZ by PIlgrmage world.
o The eXistenZ by Antena world.
o The eXistenZ Game World
o The game within a game World.
I personally think they are still in a game.
It could be that the real world is somewhere we haven’t seen in the movie… in some lab somewhere.
It could be that the real world was the eXistenZ world at the very beginning of the film, but it becomes a game world layer in the adventure once the first wave enclave test begins.
Wish List:
I have a few questions about this film.
If Allegra knows that there are people are after her and the seminar leader knows there are dangerous characters in their own camp why on earth would they hold the event at such a vulnerable location in the middle of the night with little to no security.
Why didn’t Allegra play with Gas or with Kiri Vinokur? Why did it have to be Ted? Was it that Ted and Allegra being partners in the tranCendenZ world, had to be connected together? It’s possible, but I feel as if I am over reaching for the answer here.
I also wish that some of the characters were recycled more if they were playing the game.
I wish the film kept the pace of the last 30 minutes without losing any of its gravity.
I wish it weren’t so grotesque. It probably turns off a large audience, but personally, I really didn’t mind it too much because it has a purpose in the story. But it’s so hard to share a film you like a lot when it has so many gross scenes.
I wish the film chose one person to be the person the audience roots for because the game characterizations interfere with our connection to it’s main characters.
At the end, we are not sure any of what we saw of them were real so they become emotionally forgettable.
Summary:
One of the cool aspects of the film is that I think that the audience could be considered the user in this story.
Here is an exception that because none of the main characters have our empathy we end up being extremely confused which reality is real, making the film interactive.
And the beauty of this film is the countless ways you can interpret it.
One other interesting idea that the film inspires, is the reality of reality. Allegra says everybody’s already playing the game, insinuating that reality is a game much like eXistenZ, where you have to find out the point of the game by playing the game.
So what is reality?
It’s really about perspective right?
I’m also really glad that the story did not go the, “we have to save the world route”, fighting the big evil corporation and their goons to get through it. How many times have we seen that plot point.
This was definitely something very unique.
Anyway, I am so glad I got the chance to watch this film. I was totally blown away with how cool the story unraveled on my first view and it keeps getting better for me after re-watching it a few times.
It’s bizarre, cringey, creepy and oddly enough, I liked it.
That sums up my review. I hope you liked it. This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
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