eXistenZ

1999 Directed by David Cronenberg

Play it. Live it. Kill for it.

A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.

Jennifer Jason Leigh Jude Law Ian Holm Willem Dafoe Don McKellar Callum Keith Rennie Christopher Eccleston Sarah Polley Robert A. Silverman Oscar Hsu Kris Lemche Vik Sahay Kirsten Johnson James Kirchner Balázs Koós Stephanie Belding Gerry Quigley

Alternative Titles

Crimes of the Future, eXistenZ - Du bist das Spiel

science fiction horror action thriller

97 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by BRAT ★★★½ 2

extra half star because jude law says "i have this phobia about having my body... penetrated"
Review by Kenned Lehmann ★★★★★ 6

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

This is really one of my all time favorite movies, but i might be in the minority. I can understand why it get so much hate from some people, it's not exactly breaking new ground with the whole "reality vs. illusion" theme, and it's a very strange, creepy and trippy movie. Also the acting is not always the best.
So why do i like it so much? Well, eXistenZ has something that none of the other "reality vs. illusion" movies have, in my oppinion of course. Im not saying that eXistenZ is particularly clever, deep or philosophical, not on a logical level anyway. While other "reality vs. illusion" movies can make me question reality - just a little bit at…
Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★ 5

Maybe my favorite Cronenberg now - layers and layers of "spaces" overlapped until the distinction between the virtual and the real can no longer be distinguished. This is constructed so meticulously - placing characters within a virtual world, governed by virtual laws - but this also depicts the virtual-nature of our basic standards of living: you wake up, you eat, you go to work, you have lunch, you go home, you have dinner, etc. In-between, everything becomes a game: alliances, relationships, sex, even eating food. By the end, we have no clue whether we are seeing a "game" or "reality." But it doesn't matter - for Cronenberg, they're one and the same. Masterpiece.
Review by Justin LaLiberty ★★★★★

"I'm very worried about my body."
No truer line spoken in a Cronenberg script.
Review by Tony the Terror😼🏳️‍🌈 👻 ★★★★★ 10

Hooptober V
21/31: selected directors

Can you even believe I had never seen this before? I can’t really believe I had never seen this before, but then I kinda can because it came out during my super heavy party days and I was too Busy Philipps for a movie. But still, I never got around to it til now wtfffff. I also can’t believe that Cronenberg isn’t a name I often shout out when rattling off my favorite directors to anyone who will listen, but that’s probably because I’m a little bitter about him straying from the true horror path although even his newer stuff is pretty amazing so maybe I just need to bring him into the top tier fold.…
Review by Adam Friedland 8

Best cronenberg imo smd
Review by PTAbro ★★★ 3

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

It's been a while since a finale has turned my opinion of a film from the negative to the positive so quickly and completely, but with eXistenZ, Cronenberg manages to salvage most of the confusion and campiness of the preceding 80 minutes and actually makes it work, marginally. Make no mistake - the rest of the movie is bizarre, sloppy, and really only worthwhile for the visual ingenuity of Cronenberg's obvious delight in practical effects and their implementation. However silly the rest of it is - terrible accents, ludicrous scenarios even in the context of the film universe, and a seeming disregard for conventional narrative structure - I had to begrudgingly applaud Cronenberg for fooling me so completely.
So. Does…
Review by BRAT ★★★½

i don't think anyone's ever seen this movie but it's the best movie ever made
EDIT: i was really high when i watched it & reviewed it & it's not really the best movie ever made but it's a good time
Review by matt lynch ★★½ 2

"But it's a game everybody's already playing."
Lot of eyerollers like that in here, but even though it feels kind of repetitive for Cronenberg, I like all the stuff about shifting virtual identities and artificial worlds superseding and/or merging with biological ones. The bigger problem is this seems like a shitty boring game.
Review by WraithApe ★★★★★ 9

"Death to the demoness Allegra Geller! Death to Antenna Research!"
A botched assassination attempt on the life of Antenna's star game designer begins a dizzying descent into the VR multiverse. Marketing trainee and gaming novice Ted Pikul finds himself entering into a virtual world so enveloping it leaves the gamer questioning the very nature of reality. Where does the game world end and the real one begin? Is it subjective? Do we in fact construct our own realities in exactly the same way the game does?
"We're both stumbling around together in this unformed world... whose rules and objectives are largely unknown... seemingly indecipherable or possibly nonexistent... always on the verge of being killed by forces that we don't understand."…
Review by chavel ★★★★★ 12

“You have to play the game to find out why you’re playing the game.” — Allegra
David Cronenberg’s transcendental masterpiece? I say so. eXistenZ, one of the great mindbenders of our time, constructs an alternate universe parallel to ours that is numbed by videogame addiction. The players use MetaFlesh game-pods that use bioports to plug into their spines. Jennifer Jason Leigh is highly lauded game designer Allegra Geller and Jude Law is reluctant PR nerd Ted Pikul. “I have this phobia about having my body penetrated surgically,” he states in concern. His nervous system is uncooperative when finally jacked-in. Brace yourself. This is science-fiction defiant of conventional formulas.
Following an opening introduction held at a vacant church, Allegra syncs up…
Review by Rafael Jovine ★★★ 14

Action!: The Many Bodies Of One David Cronenberg
If you remember or lived through most of the 90s, you are very aware that VR peaked during that decade, everything happening now its more like a comeback than anything else. Sci-fi movies that blended reality as our characters found themselves into a new realm was very common back in the days. How big? Big enough for a pretty big name like Cronenberg to try out.
Did he succeed? Well, apparently about everyone in my LB letterboxd he did. Personally I found it to be really creative, like the gross out design of the emulator device used to insert people into this new reality was really cool in a disgusting way. The…

Recent reviews

Review by Megan ★★★★½

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

FUCK!!!!! whooooooooo. i really didn’t think i would like this, forty minutes in i didn’t really like it if i’m being honest- i was way out of my comfort zone in the land of sci-fi, with the sticky guns and weird pod thingies. but this came together so nicely, i am floored. i was so satisfied with the ending, this is like the only time “it was all in your head” didn’t annoy me- it felt perfectly surprising.
random thoughts: i was sure i heard jude law’s accent slip through once so i was gratified to find out at the end that he is, in fact, british. jennifer jason lee is so fashionable in this, her hair, shirt, etc was…
Review by bandsaboutmovie ★★★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

While the rest of the world was losing their mind over The Matrix, David Cronenberg quietly released this movie, a tale of alternate realities that is a way bigger idea inside a way smaller movie.
Sometime in the future, Antenna Research and Cortical Systematics are in a war with one another to make the latest and greatest games for their biotech virtual reality game consoles. These game pods are living and breathing creatures that have UmbyCords that directly connect into anus-appearing bio-ports on the users' spines.
If you read that paragraph and don’t say, “What?” then this is the movie for you.
The cold war between these two companies is only increasing, where a religious group called the Realists fights…
Review by JoshuaRoss ★★★★

This easily has to be the horniest movie ever made that doesn’t have nudity or sex in it. Very horny, but also very gross - a true Cronenberg film through and through. Love a movie that gets right into it, and especially love any art that openly fucks with your perception of reality.
Review by DaveD ★★★½

Nach dem zweiten Rewatch immer noch gut.
Der Film baut sein Mysterium solide auf, speziell die VR Welt.
Die verrückten Zukunftsideen gefallen mir sehr und sind sehr kreativ.
Die Charaktere sind etwas strange, aber so auch durchaus einzigartig.
Nur ich kann mit dem Look mich nicht zu 100% anfreunden.
Und finde es schade dass das Setting so klein ist.
Aber das Ende ist dann wieder durchaus genial.
Review by Manchego Barista ★★★½

mmm i’ve really worked up an appetite
Review by Beatr1c3 ★★★½

Sad gamer dudes worshipping Jennifer Jason Leigh is the only believable part of this movie
Review by Raul Arthuso ★★★★★ 1

welcome to the desert of real
Review by Tom ★★★½

only thing i liked about it for most of it was the sexy bioport penetration. then the last 15 minutes made the rest of it worth it
Review by Gavin Le Ber ★★★★

This is the real Gamer Gate
Review by Henrique Guimarães ★★★★★

só o tempo dirá qual é melhor: Pequenos Espiões 3 ou esse aqui
Cronemberg é gênio absoluto
Review by cshad ★★★½

This movie is absolutely wild
Review by jtingle ★★★½

Though you could certainly fault this film for its predictable plot twists and odd performances, there was enough of substance here to chew on that I found myself warming to its anxiety ridden dream logic as I thought about it more. For example, the way that the technology in the film is imagined as body horror devices changing one's owned biology is a latent symbol that can only be fully appreciated after the final scene.
It might not have been the most satisfying movie, and it may have posed more questions than it dared deliver answers, but it was still perfect as a late night mind-bender.