eXistenZ (1999)

Today on Movie Russian Roulette, Alex is betrayed. From the director of the peerless Videodrome comes a complete piece of drivel that I'm half-convinced is about assholes. I mean, actual assholes.

Not talking about the actors

Overview: Allegra Geller is a famous game designer who is testing a new game of hers that's played, like all video games in this world, by plugging a semi-organic controller into a tiny artificial asshole (no, I'm serious, look if you don't believe me) at the base of your spinal column. Humans are the game consoles and the controllers. Now, if that sounds interesting, it is, but the movie sadly doesn't really do anything with this. From the first moment of this one neat idea, the movie fails to capitalize on it. But more on that later.





This new game, eXistenZ (it's rad because it has wacky capitalization and is misspelled, kids; don't copy that floppy or you won't be the bee's knees OH GOD PLEASE TELL US WE'RE RELEVANT YOUNG PEOPLE), is played with these controllers that look like abortions that gyrate over people's crotches as the game plays in their mind.

In any case, in the middle of very public testing, some kid whips out a gun from his own custom fetustroller and pops the "Game Goddess" (her thankfully quickly dropped nickname) in the shoulder, before he's shot up like Bieber. She and a random marketing guy flee the company and ditch their only connection to the company because reasons and go on the lam to... do something? It's never quite clear. Except for save her game, which has no backup copies because of flimsy dramatic tension.

A series of quote-unquote "mind-bending" twists and turns follow as they move, Inception-style, through different parts of her game, leading to a twist at the end that holds up only slightly more than good ol' Crimetime's ending did. (GUYS THEY WERE IN THE GAME THE WHOLE MOVIE, GUYS)

This "twist" allows for the "real people" to comment on their game (movie) characters after getting back to reality and mock them, which just undermines the movie's attempts to be taken seriously. In a more competent movie, this could have been a great comic relief to the dramatic twists by injecting some whiplash comedy, but it mostly falls flat here. "Hey guys, we had flat and uninteresting characters in this movie! Hah ha, we had a gas station attendant named 'Gas!' Hah ha hah! Ha HA HA HA ISN'T THAT WACKY WHY DON'T YOU LOVE US"

Notable moments/quotes: I can make a somewhat strong argument for the main male character, Ted's, main arc in the movie being trying pegging or something gay. When the movie begins, he doesn't have one of these lovely "bio-ports" but gets pressured into getting one. "Don't fight it" is the oft-repeated phrase; the fact that it comes from a female character somehow doesn't help. He's trying this strange thing he's never tried before and keeps finding he likes it, loosening up more and enjoying himself as the movie goes on. All because he got the game-enabling fake asshole and starts shoving fleshy, thick... cables into it in order to try this new game. As further evidence, the prosecution submits the following quotes from the movie.

Ted, beginning of the movie: "I have this phobia about having my body penetrated."

"You get over it."

Allegra, rubbing literal lube on his port before they start to both play the game: "New ports are sometimes a bit... tight."

he knows all about that

At one point the day after getting his new port, Ted experiences some swelling. He thinks it's infected. Allegra insists it's just "excited."

Allegra: "You'll see how natural it feels."

Ted: "I feel really vulnerable."

Allegra: "You won't be able to stop yourself. Might as well enjoy it."

he'll make sure you do

Also, after putting something in her "port," Ted starts licking it. She is not amused.

Beyond all that fun, there's an extended driving scene where the classic technique of looping the same rolling background behind the "car" set is used, and it looks worse in this movie than in the early seasons of Seinfeld. And, Seinfeld, I love you, but your driving scenes looked awful in the early seasons.

The gun hidden in the fetustroller I mentioned earlier fires teeth as its ammo. As in, human teeth. There is no particular reason why.

My thoughts: So... I'm hardly well-versed in sci-fi. I'll admit that upfront. However, I know that a lot of sci-fi roots itself in exploring one particular concept and how that relates to our own society by making it just a few steps removed from our own for easier comparison; it's like the theatre or many other forms of entertainment where creating these new societies and worlds makes it easier to examine our own follies in a safe environment and reflect. Star Trek: the Next Generation was famous for this, and Trek in general rocketed this kind of scifi to the mainstream pop culture consciousness. However, even at Trek's dumbest, it had some kind of reason to back up the stance it took, or presented opposing philosophies and sides and stood back to let the reader decide.

This movie attempts to set that up by introducing in the movie a faction of those dedicated to "realism" who hate video games and escaping from reality. Okay, all well and good. I've played video games my whole life and even made one, yet there are certainly points that can be made against video games. However, the argument of the realists for why games are bad? ...It's that games are bad. They end up sounding more like COBRA than any even vaguely realistic ideological organization.

don't lump ussss in with thossse hackssssss

The movie also halfheartedly tries to make a point about the exploitation of animals, as it turns out that (maybe) mutated frogs, lizards, and the like are used as living factories for the creepy game controllers as well as the tooth gun used in the movie's introduction. However, again, the movie doesn't really expand on this or tie it to the bigger picture. "Oh, well, exploiting animals is bad and stuff, I guess," it says, then shrugs and moves on.

This kind of movie can remind us all why exposition can be so critically important: it serves to keep the audience grounded in the bigger picture. It can easily be overused, but even just here and there to have the groundwork laid out so we can construct our own conclusions would be nice. Without it, we can go off the rails and miss the point.

In example, when I look over fiction for other people on occasion, I'll often try as an exercise to make some out-of-left-field assumption (see bioports as assholes, above) and try to support it with borderline out-of-context examples. More often than not, this becomes frustrating for the author as I deliberately overlook what they're trying to convey, but if I do a good enough job, it shows that there's perhaps symbolic fat that ought to be trimmed. I think such is the case with this movie. It vomits up a rainbow of various ideas and concepts, but doesn't really clean them up or arrange them at all. So what is the moviegoer left with? A few interesting-looking tidbits in a pile of rotted, half-digested food and other fluids (and I have completely lost track of this metaphor). Sure, you could fish around, clean up the stomach diamonds, and arrange them neatly in a nice display, but if the filmmakers clearly don't give a crispy shit, is it really worth your time? I don't think so, at least.

In conclusion to that little tangent, in the fourth wall breaking segment at the end, one of the characters comments after leaving the game-around-a-game, "There were too many twists and turns at the end. I couldn't absorb it."

The movie is giving itself far too much credit there. It thinks it's smart; I disagree.

The acting is also largely wooden. This movie manages to make performances from Jude Law and Willem DeFOE seem mostly bland.

However, with all that said, there are moments of unintentional hilarity, and just to see how goddamn unsettling the game equipment is would be sort of worthwhile. But for those of you who enjoy movies that are, y'know, good, seek out Videodrome instead. It's the same director doing a very similar movie, but in a far more poignant and lucid fashion. You'll thank yourself for it.

I give this movie a Nic Cage Aces His Interrogation out of five.