eXistenZ (1999)
With another near-future setting, eXistenZ focuses on ‘virtual reality’ game technology. Here, electronic games consoles have been replaced with organic “game pods,” which are attached to “bio-ports” installed in the user’s spine with an umbilical cord. The industry is dominated by two competing companies – Antenna Research and Cortical Systematics – both of whom are battling against a rebellious group known as “Realists,” who are determined to halt the deformation of reality.
When we first meet Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason-Leigh), we learn that she is the world’s best game designer. She is introducing her latest game – ‘eXistenZ’ – at a public event, when she is shot by a Realist. Eye-witness Ted Pikul (Jude Law) rushes to her aid and helps her to escape. Discovering that her own game pod has been damaged in the attack – and knowing that it contains the only copy of eXistenZ – she convinces Pikul to have a bio-port of his own installed, so that she can safely test the game. They visit Gas (Willem Dafoe) – a black marketeer – to have a bio-port installed, only for him to betray them – installing a faulty pod and trying to kill Allegra.
As the unlikely team-mates rush from one scenario to another, it soon becomes clear that they are inside the game. What follows is layer upon layer of intricately woven characters and motivations, as Allegra is constantly threatened by rival game designers, Realists, and assassins hired by her competitors. With the two struggling to ‘complete the game,’ the fact of their reality becomes an unknown and fluid thing.
What eXistenZ brings us is a tale of humankind bringing about our own downfall through sheer, unadulterated greed. It has us falling into the same supply-and-demand trap that has millions of people dying each year from smoking-related cancers. We invent something, we get hooked before we fully understand the implications of it, we want more and go further to achieve it. Corporations respond by delivering the goods, because they make vast amounts of money from it. Money buys power and influence, and so the commercial cycle is perpetuated while the human race circles the drain. Here, it is our obsession with technology that is the dangerous and evil thing. How can we make the games better, more thrilling and more enticing? How can we get users even closer to the gaming experience? By breaching the physical divide, of course.
Writer-director David Cronenberg delivers a gripping science fiction thriller with eXistenZ, featuring a cast including Jennifer Jason-Leigh, Jude Law, Ian Holm, Christopher Eccleston and Willem Dafoe. They play out each betrayal and story twist with a deft touch as the audience is left to question reality as much as the characters do. But this is a significant entry into this genre, because it is human greed that is spiralling out of control, with technology being created in response – as opposed to the other way around. Ultimately, however, it begs the question – why work so hard to create a fully immersive ‘virtual reality,’ when actual reality is right here?