NEON has released the disturbing official Crimes of the Future trailer, which gives us a new look at writer/director David Cronenberg’s new film opening in theaters in June. You can watch the Crimes of the Future trailer using the player below, and the teaser is still available here.
Crimes of the Future, which will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, has been rated R for strong, disturbing, violent content and grisly images, graphic nudity, and some language.
While Cronenberg wrote and directed another 1970 sci-fi film with the same name, this is not a remake of that movie. The new movie is set in a not-so-distant future when humankind is learning to adapt to its synthetic surroundings.
Their biological makeup changed, and many humans have adapted to life with “Accelerated Evolution Syndrome,” thanks partly to specialized equipment that aids in everything from eating to sleeping. Beloved performance artist Saul Tenser sleeps in a womb-like bed suspended in mid-air.
The OrchidBed, as it’s called, comes complete with software to anticipate and adjust his every bodily need. The machine even detects the growth of new organs, which Saul’s creative partner Caprice can observe and tattoo in his personal operating theatre.
Together, Saul and Caprice have turned the discovery and removal of these new body organs into performance art via sold-out voyeuristic surgical shows using a sarcophagus-like machine where the surgeries take place.
These human evolutionary changes do not receive universal positivity. Before long, a new secret government entity is established — the National Organ Registry, led by bureaucrats Wippet and Timlin — to discreetly track new organ growths, with particular enthusiasm for Saul’s artistic anomalies.
With increased scrutiny on the syndrome and, therefore, his art, Saul is forced to consider what would be his most shocking performance of all.
The cast includes Viggo Mortensen (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, Green Book), Léa Seydoux (No Time to Die, The French Dispatch, Blue Is the Warmest Colour) and Kristen Stewart (Seberg, Clouds of Sils Maria, Twilight).
Scott Speedman, Don McKellar, Yorgos Pirpassopoulos, Tanaya Beatty, Nadia Litz, Lihi Kornowski, and Denise Capezza also star. Crimes of the Future is a Canada-Hellenic Republic Co-Production and was filmed on location in Athens, Greece.
The NEON and Serendipity Point Films film reunites Cronenberg, a Cannes Jury Prize winner, Venice Career Golden Lion winner, and Berlin Silver Bear winner, with Mortensen, a three-time Oscar nominee, in their fourth collaboration.
“‘Crimes of the Future’ is a meditation on human evolution. Specifically – the ways in which we have had to take control of the process because we have created such powerful environments that did not exist previously,” said Cronenberg previously.
He added: “Crimes of the Future’ is an evolution of things I have done before. Fans will see key references to other scenes and moments from my other films. That’s a continuity of my understanding of technology as connected to the human body.
“Technology is always an extension of the human body, even when it seems to be very mechanical and non-human. A fist becomes enhanced by a club or a stone that you throw – but ultimately, that club or stone is an extension of some potency that the human body already has.
“At this critical junction in human history, one wonders – can the human body evolve to solve problems we have created? Can the human body evolve a process to digest plastics and artificial materials not only as part of a solution to the climate crisis but also to grow, thrive, and survive?”
The film is the fourth collaboration between producer Robert Lantos (Eastern Promises, eXistenZ, Crash) and Cronenberg. Steve Solomos (Possessor) is a co-producer, and Panos Papahadzis (Knifer, Stratus) is a co-producer for Athens-based Argonauts Productions.
The executive producers include Joe Iacono, Aida Tannyan, Peter Touche, Christelle Conan, Tom Quinn, Jeff Deutchman, Christian Parkes, and Thorsten Schumacher.
Mirko Parlevliet has been reporting on the entertainment industry since 1998 and founded Vital Thrills in 2018 to cover the latest news on streaming, movies, TV, and video games.