Review: David Cronenberg's 'Crimes of the Future' is weird, disturbing, and completely fascinating

Of all the weird things in the futuristic freak show “Crimes of the Future” — the exploration of internal organs, the kid eating plastic, the guy with ear lobes all over his body — the weirdest might be how comforting it is to watch director David Cronenberg, at age 79, revisiting the body-horror themes that have marked his long career.

In a rather grungy near-future, Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) and his professional and life partner, Caprice (Lea Seydoux) are performance artists with a particularly specific act: Saul grows new organs in his body, to which Caprice applies tattoos before surgically removing them — all in front of an audience. In this future, pain and infection are practically nonexistent, so surgery can happen anywhere. As Timlin (the always engaged Kristen Stewart), a rabbity government functionary with a fascination for Saul’s organs, puts it, “surgery is the new sex.”

As Saul seems to have trouble swallowing, even sitting in his special chair for digesting, he meets with Timlin and her boss, Wippet (Don McKellar), who runs the secret government National Organ Registry. Wippet knows about something called “the inner beauty pageant,” and suggests that Saul, if he grows another organ, could take best in show.

So where does an underground environmental activist (Scott Speedman), two slightly unhinged technicians (Tanaya Beatty and Nadia Litz), and a sarcophagus that performs autopsies factor into all of this? And what about Saul’s continued body augmentations — including a zipper in his belly — and how Caprice is reacting to it all?

This is Cronenberg, after all — the guy who has explored “the new flesh” in such films as “Videodrome,” “The Fly,” “Dead Ringers,” “Crash” (the car-accident one) and “Naked Lunch,” among others. (He started his career with a 1970 film, also titled “Crimes of the Future,” that touches on some of the same themes.) Some of the scenes— of beds with built-in scalpels, and cutting as foreplay — are not for the squeamish.

What Cronenberg, who also wrote the screenplay, seems interested in talking about what the world around us, and generations of pollution and medical breakthroughs, are doing to our insides, physically and mentally. He doesn’t have the answers, but in “Crimes of the Future,” he’s asking the most interesting questions.

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‘Crimes of the Future’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 3, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong disturbing violent content and grisly images, graphic nudity and some language. Running time: 107 minutes.