An update of the director’s same-titled second film, the one that caused David Cronenberg scholar Kim Newman to remark, "It's possible to be boring and interesting at the same time." Remember Crash, Cronenberg’s ode to a society so desensitized the only way to achieve sexual satisfaction is after a car wreck, preferably a near-fatal one at that? Thanks to the presence of Accelerated Evolution Syndrome, tumors and body mutation have replaced automobiles as a function of fetishism. Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), a modern day conjurer with a veritably inexhaustible tumor supply chain, travels the country performing live operations along with magician’s assistant Caprice (Léa Seydoux). As a spoof on humanities’ preoccupation with external beauty — scarification as performance art?! — there are few finer, with Kristen Stewart stealing the show as Tenser’s tongue-tied, sycophantic assistant. But not unlike Cronenberg’s noble attempt to bring William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch to the screen, there’s a point midway through Tenser’s battles with severe pain — he seeks comfort on a therapeutic device that looks like a mugwump swallowed a Dali armchair sculpture — and the National Organ Registry and that found me abandoning coherence in favor of synchronized head scratching. (2022) — Scott Marks
This movie is not currently in theaters.