In the year 2030, ultra-sustainable biotechnological devices have replaced unsustainable electronic ones. Game pods present "UmbiCords" that attach to "bio-ports", connectors surgically inserted into players' spines. Two game companies, Antenna Research and Cortical Systematics, compete against each other. In addition, a group of fanatics called Realists fight both companies to prevent the "deforming" of reality.
Antenna Research's Allegra Geller, a world renowned game designer, is demonstrating her latest virtual reality game, eXistenZ, to a focus group. A Realist named Noel Dichter shoots Allegra in the shoulder with an organic pistol he smuggled past security. As the security team guns down Dichter, security guard and publicist Ted Pikul rushes to Geller and escorts her outside.
Geller discovers that her pod, which contains the only copy of eXistenZ, may have been damaged. Pikul reluctantly agrees to have a bio-port installed in his spine so they can jointly test the game's integrity. Allegra takes him to a gas station run by a black-marketeer named Gas, who deliberately installs a faulty bio-port. He reveals his intention to kill Geller for the bounty on her head. Pikul kills Gas, and the two escape to a former ski lodge used by Kiri Vinokur, Geller's mentor. Vinokur and his assistant repair the damaged pod and give Pikul a new bio-port.
Geller and Pikul enter the game, and meet with D'Arcy Nader, a video game shop owner, who provides them with new "micro pods". They activate the new pods and enter a deeper layer of virtual reality. They assume new identities as workers in a game pod factory. Another worker in the factory, Yevgeny Nourish, claims to be their Realist contact. At a Chinese restaurant near the factory, Nourish recommends that they order "the special" for lunch. Pikul eats the unappetizing special, and constructs a pistol from the inedible parts. He impulsively threatens Geller, then shoots the Chinese waiter. When the pair return to the game store, Hugo Carlaw informs them that Nourish is actually a double agent for Cortical Systematics, and the waiter Pikul murdered was the actual contact.
At the factory, they find a diseased pod. Geller connects it to her bio-port, planning to infect the other pods and sabotage the factory. When Geller quickly becomes ill, Pikul cuts the UmbiCord, but she begins to bleed to death. Nourish appears with a flamethrower and blasts the diseased pod, which bursts into deadly spores.
Geller and Pikul awaken back at the ski lodge, where they discover Geller's game pod is also diseased. Geller surmises that Vinokur must have infected Pikul's new bio-port to destroy her game, and she inserts a disinfecting device into Pikul's bioport. Unexpectedly, Carlaw reappears as a Realist resistance fighter and escorts Geller and Pikul outside to witness the death of eXistenZ. Before Carlaw can kill Geller, Vinokur, who is a double agent for Cortical Systematics, shoots Carlaw in the back and informs Geller that he copied her game data while fixing her pod; she then vengefully kills Vinokur. Pikul then reveals that he himself is a Realist sent to kill her. Geller tells Pikul she had known his intentions since he pointed the gun at her in the Chinese restaurant, and she remotely detonates the disinfecting device in his bioport, killing him.
Suddenly, Pikul and Geller are seated in chairs in a small abandoned church, seeing rows of pews as they come to, together with all of the other members of the cast, all wearing blue electronic virtual reality devices. Nourish explains that the story was all part of a virtual reality game he designed called transCendenZ. He tells his assistant Merle that he feels uneasy, because the anti-game plot elements may have originated from the thoughts of one of the testers. Pikul and Geller approach Nourish and accuse him of distorting reality, before shooting him and Merle to death. As Pikul and Geller leave, they aim their guns at the person who played the Chinese waiter, who first pleads for his life, then asks if they are still in the game. Pikul and Geller stand together silently, not answering.
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November 2017)
The film's plot came about after Cronenberg conducted an interview with Salman Rushdie for Shift magazine in 1995. At the time, Rushdie was in hiding due to a fatwa having been put on his life, due to his controversial book The Satanic Verses.[10] Rushdie's dilemma gave Cronenberg an idea of "a Fatwa [sic] against a virtual-reality game designer". Existenz was originally pitched to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but they did not green-light the film due to its complex structure.[11]
This was Cronenberg's first original script since Videodrome.[12]
Novelizations
Christopher Priest wrote the tie-in novel to accompany the film eXistenZ, the theme of which has much in common with some of Priest's other novels.
In 1999, a graphic novel credited to David Cronenberg and Sean Scoffield was published.
Reception
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November 2017)
The film received generally positive reviews, with a 75% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes based on 75 reviews, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Gooey, slimy, grotesque fun."[13]Metacritic assigned a score of 68 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[14]
Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four in his review of the film, noting its release after fellow science-fiction film The Matrix. He compared the two films, stating that while both have special effects, Cronenberg's film was stranger along with having his best effects involve "gooey, indescribable organic things".[15]
Conversely, James Berardinelli gave the film a two out of four star rating in his review. He cites that the film had a "disjointed feel", and called it a "missed opportunity" that suffered from being released near The Matrix and Open Your Eyes, which he states did similar things that were accomplished better in those films.[16]
Box office
The film grossed $2.9 million in Canada and the United States[6] and $2.6 million in the United Kingdom.[17]
David Paul Cronenberg is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He is a principal originator of the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation, infectious diseases, and the intertwining of the psychological, physical, and technological. Cronenberg is best known for exploring these themes through sci-fi horror films such as Shivers (1975), Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983) and The Fly (1986), though he has also directed dramas, psychological thrillers and gangster films.
Jennifer Jason Leigh is an American actress. She began her career on television during the 1970s before making her film breakthrough in the teen film Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). She received critical praise for her performances in Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989), Miami Blues (1990), Backdraft (1991), Single White Female (1992), and The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Dorothy Parker in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994).
Hyperreality is a concept in post-structuralism that refers to the process of the evolution of notions of reality, leading to a cultural state of confusion between signs and symbols invented to stand in for reality, and direct perceptions of consensus reality. Hyperreality is seen as a condition in which, because of the compression of perceptions of reality in culture and media, what is generally regarded as real and what is understood as fiction are seamlessly blended together in experiences so that there is no longer any clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins.
The Fly is a 1986 American science fiction body horror film directed and co-written by David Cronenberg. Produced by Brooksfilms and distributed by 20th Century Fox, the film stars Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, and John Getz. Loosely based on George Langelaan's 1957 short story of the same name and the 1958 film of the same name, The Fly tells of an eccentric scientist who, after one of his experiments goes wrong, slowly turns into a fly-hybrid creature. The score was composed by Howard Shore and the make-up effects were created by Chris Walas, along with makeup artist Stephan Dupuis.
Christopher Mackenzie Priest was a British novelist and science fiction writer. His works include Fugue for a Darkening Island (1972), The Inverted World (1974), The Affirmation (1981), The Glamour (1984), The Prestige (1995), and The Separation (2002).
Spider is a 2002 psychological thriller film produced and directed by David Cronenberg and based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Patrick McGrath, who also wrote the screenplay.
The Thirteenth Floor is a 1999 science fiction neo-noir film written and directed by Josef Rusnak, and produced by Roland Emmerich through his Centropolis Entertainment company. It is loosely based upon Simulacron-3 (1964), a novel by Daniel F. Galouye, and a remake of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s miniseries World on a Wire (1973). The film stars Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Dennis Haysbert. In 2000, The Thirteenth Floor was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film, but lost to The Matrix.
Denise Cronenberg was a Canadian costume designer.
Don McKellar is a Canadian actor, writer, playwright, and filmmaker. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave.
"The Days of Perky Pat" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in 1963 in Amazing magazine.
Natural Nylon was a British film and theatre production company, in operation from 1997 to 2003.
Robert A. Silverman is a Canadian actor cast five times by writer/director David Cronenberg. He is sometimes credited as Bob Silverman or Robert Silverman. He has also acted in the Friday the 13th: The Series episodes "Hate On Your Dial" and "Faith Healer", and acted with him in Jason X.
An annual award for Best Achievement in Music - Original Score is presented by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television to the best Canadian original score for the previous year. Prior to 2012, the award was presented as part of the Genie Awards; since 2012 it has been presented as part of the expanded Canadian Screen Awards.
Allegra is a female given name of Italian origin meaning joyful (happy) or lively. It was first used as a name in the medieval era in Italy.
Carol Spier is a Canadian production designer and art director. Much of her work has been on David Cronenberg films.
Ronald Sanders is a Canadian film editor and television producer.
James Isaac was an American film director and visual effects supervisor.
Cosmopolis is a 2012 drama film written, produced, and directed by David Cronenberg. It stars Robert Pattinson, Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, Juliette Binoche, Jay Baruchel and Kevin Durand. It is based on Don DeLillo's 2003 novel.
The 49th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from 10 to 21 February 1999. The festival opened with Aimée & Jaguar by Max Färberböck.
Virtual reality in fiction describes fictional representations of the technological concept of virtual reality.
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