Attention for the weak-hearted: You might want to give this first trailer for David Cronenberg’s new film a miss. While it’s technically safe for work, there are a lot of visually unpleasant things going on in there, not least of which is a guy… uh… keeping his mouth shut. Permanently.
Sorry to be so coy, but “man gets his eyes and mouth graphically sewn closed and also he has extra ears in wrong places” is not necessarily a sentence everyone wants to read first thing in the morning (or write, for that matter). But I suppose it’s to be expected when body horror-enthusiast — and occasional Star Trek: Discovery star — David Cronenberg releases his first film since 2014’s Map to the Stars. This movie, Crimes of the Future, looks to be focused almost entirely on the body horror that’s marked the director’s oeuvre so heavily, including Scanners, The Fly, Crash, and many more. So consider yourself warned before you hit play:
Gross! Also a little confusing! Here, maybe the synopsis will help:
“As the human species adapts to a synthetic environment, the body undergoes new transformations and mutations. With his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux), Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), celebrity performance artist, publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances. Timlin (Kristen Stewart), an investigator from the National Organ Registry, obsessively tracks their movements, which is when a mysterious group is revealed… Their mission – to use Saul’s notoriety to shed light on the next phase of human evolution.”
Cronenberg fans might know that Crimes of the Future is the name of another of the director’s films, one made way back in 1970. However, this new movie has nothing to do with the old one, which is good because the original sounds just unbelievably horrible (search it for yourself if you don’t believe me).
In addition to Mortensen, Seydoux, and Stewart, Crimes of the Future stars Scott Speedman, Welket Bungué, Lihi Kornowski, and Don McKellar. It should arrive sometime this June.
Editor’s Note: Release dates within this article are based in the U.S., but will be updated with local Australian dates as soon as we know more.