Premiere
"...Powerful, intelligent, disturbing, and, believe it or not, fun movie, one that's worth seeing multiple times..." 06/01/1999 p.22-4Entertainment Weekly
"...Unusually witty....The psychological depths Cronenberg reaches are tingling to fathom..." -- Rating: B 10/22/1999 p.94 New York Times
"...EXISTENZ has the oozing, throbbing, ghoulish hallmarks of other Cronenberg fever dreams..." 04/23/1999 p.E21 Box Office
"....Cronenberg's observations reflect the concern that technology is replacing social interaction....[With] complex themes and even more complex plot..." 06/01/1999 p.67 USA Today
"...The acting is good, there are provocative moments and Cronenberg has a sharp ending up his sleeve..." 04/23/1999 p.8E Los Angeles Times
"...A provocative entertainment....The Cronenberg trademarks are here in full force....Sci-fi fantasy/horror doesn't get more sophisticated than EXISTENZ..." 04/23/1999 p.F18 San Francisco Chronicle 0 of 10
...eXistenZ is about computer games, or rather "the world's greatest game designer," played by the diva of existential dread, Jennifer Jason Leigh...Its wit and sly visual puns disguise a gleefully pessimistic point of view. [Director David] Cronenberg must get a kick out of making audiences uncomfortable -- eXistenZ is a horror film that spins off the fear of sex. Wickedly, it makes direct hits at a number of other targets in the process. Computer-game geeks are likened to cultish true believers. Game creators are idolized as pop visionaries but swim with sharks who can be as coolly ambitious as the most crass bottom-line executive -- or megabuck movie producer. Allegra Geller (Leigh) is demonstrating her latest game, called eXistenZ, for a focus group of advanced players in an atmosphere tinged with an edge of suppressed hysteria. In Leigh's performance, Allegra is something like an ancient Greek soothsayer driven to distraction. Her visionary sojourns have obviously come at a considerable emotional cost. [eXistenZ] is one serious game... While players are convinced that the game is the only thing that gives their lives meaning, the throbbing pod draws its energy from them. It is all very trippy. In Cronenberg's hands, it can also be whimsical, eerie or disgusting, sometimes all at once. eXistenZ lures the audience to keep going where it fears to tread. An ominous Chinese waiter serves concoctions that go beyond exotic. Terrorist guns are made out of bones (to avoid metal detectors), teeth stand for bullets and, as in Crash, wounds are associated with sex. Needless to say, reality is not what it seems to be... Leigh is perfectly cast as the game-pod goddess. She is drawn to roles that expose a neurotic dark side (Single White Female, Dolores Claiborne) and a longing for druggy escape through half-lidded eyes. Like Cronenberg's M. Butterfly, eXistenZ toys with our expectations. Cronenberg made the only truly daring version of David Henry Hwang's play about the lengths people will go to deceive themselves -- there was never any doubt that the Chinese opera singer played by John Lone was actually a man -- and unfairly suffered criticism for his dashing of illusions. He's at it again. He enjoys pulling the rug out from under Allegra and from us. - Bob Graham
Time Magazine 0 of 10
In this virtual-reality game, the game-pod looks like an animal kidney, and the plug (ugh) goes into a hole in your back. No big deal, says the game's creator (Jennifer Jason Leigh): "They do it in malls; it's like having your ears pierced." She might be a stand-in for the writer-director [David Cronenberg], who in Scanners, Crash and The Fly has dealt creepily and eloquently with the disintegration of mind and body. eXistenZ,...is more modest than its current twin, The Matrix, but it pulses with a furtive fury that's pure Cronenberg. Like the virtual game he plays on us, the film is weird, it's addictive, and Lord, it's alive! - Richard Corliss
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