Film

Crimes of the Future

Name: Crimes of the Future
Genre: Science Fiction, Horror, Thriller
Released: 2022
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Scott Speedman, Kristen Stewart, Welket Bungué

Science fiction
Very dark
Strange

David Cronenberg's visceral sci-fi nightmare about a performance artist whose body mutates in real time. Deliberately repulsive, philosophically unsettling, and completely committed to the discomfort of watching flesh transform. For people who think cinema should disturb as well as move them.

TMDb rating

3.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy body horror that treats flesh as a philosophical question, with deadpan dialogue, clinical surgical staging and a patient, unsettling sense of ritual.

Skip it if you want propulsive plot or a clear hook, since it moves at a funereal pace and much of its strangeness is delivered through talk rather than action.

What it asks of you: Long stretches of stillness and sterile rooms, with gore that arrives unexpectedly, so you need patience and a tolerance for a slow, cerebral unease across just under two hours.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Fly1986

Cronenberg's masterpiece of body horror: a scientist's slow transmutation into something inhuman, rendered with both scientific precision and genuine tragedy. Essential viewing for understanding what Crimes is doing.

But The practical effects are graphically revolting—not in an abstract way. If viscera on screen makes you queasy, this will test your limits.

Videodrome1983

Another Cronenberg fever dream about technology invading the body and corrupting consciousness. Hallucinatory, genuinely disturbing, and endlessly rewatchable for new interpretations of its dense symbolism.

But It's deliberately confusing and doesn't resolve neatly. The VHS aesthetic and 80s setting might feel dated to some, and the sexual violence is hard to watch.

Annihilation2018

A mysterious zone where the laws of biology break down and human bodies warp into impossible new shapes. Philosophical science fiction that trusts the audience to sit with dread and weirdness without answers.

But It's slow and atmospheric—long stretches of quiet tension. The ending divides people sharply, and some find the metaphors obscure rather than profound.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Crimes of the Future

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Baraka1992

Both treat the human body as a text being rewritten by forces beyond individual control. Baraka shows collective biological and social transformation; Crimes shows it through the lens of performance art and individual mutation. Same philosophical question: what are we becoming?

Ron Fricke's wordless visual epic—no plot, no dialogue, just 90 minutes of stunning imagery documenting human ritual, industry, nature, and transformation. A cinema of pure form and consequence, where bodies and systems evolve before your eyes.

But Without narrative or explanation, some find it pretentious or tediously slow. It demands active engagement and meditation rather than passive consumption.

eXistenZ1999

Cronenberg exploring the boundary between flesh and simulation through a game designer whose creation literally plugs into human spines. Grotesque, funny, and architecturally intricate in its plotting.

But The bio-mechanical squelch of it all is intentionally repulsive. It's also deliberately convoluted and doesn't reward passive watching.

The Thing1982

Carpenter's paranoid masterpiece about an alien that absorbs and mimics living organisms. Body horror as existential threat, with practical effects that still hold up as genuinely disturbing.

But It's bleak and misanthropic—characters turn on each other, and there's no redemption arc. Ambiguous ending bothers people who want closure.

Under the Skin2014

Glazer's hypnotic alien-visitor film is pure sensory immersion—gorgeous, unsettling, and formally daring. An experiment in what cinema can do beyond narrative.

But Plot is minimal and abstract. Long sequences of observation without dialogue will lose anyone wanting conventional storytelling or clear answers about what's happening.

Possession1981

Andrzej Żuławski's deranged masterpiece: a marriage dissolving into nightmare, body horror, and psychological annihilation. Visionary and absolutely unhinged in the best way.

But It's genuinely chaotic and hard to follow. The creature effects are dated, and the sexual violence is explicit and disturbing without being gratuitous—it's just horrifying.

Suspiria1977

Dario Argento's giallo nightmare: a young dancer enters a prestigious ballet academy hiding a coven of witches. Stunning color, operatic violence, and a atmosphere of creeping dread.

But The plot is thin and often nonsensical. It prioritizes mood and style over logic, and the murders are graphically violent in ways that feel exploitative to some.

Tusk2014

Kevin Smith's deeply weird body-horror comedy-horror about a podcaster transformed into a walrus. Unclassifiable, audacious, and genuinely disturbing beneath the absurdist humor.

But It's tonally confused between comedy and body horror, which makes it uneven. The premise is so bizarre that it alienates people looking for grounded sci-fi or conventional thrills.

The Substance2024

Both use extreme body transformation as performance and metaphor for systems of control and spectacle. Each asks: who profits from the display of human flesh, and what does that violence cost?

Coralie Fargeat's audacious body-horror satire about a woman who uses a black-market drug to generate a younger version of herself. Grotesque, fiercely feminist, and as visually repulsive as it is formally brilliant.

But It's graphic in ways that will make you uncomfortable—not just blood, but the detailed texture of deterioration and bodily violation. Also nearly three hours of unrelenting grotesquerie.

Xtro1982

Both are fringe sci-fi films obsessed with reproduction as invasion and transformation as public spectacle. Xtro is Crimes' grimy, forgotten ancestor—less intellectual, more primal, but reaching for the same nerve about bodies that don't stay intact.

A British B-movie so proudly weird and unbothered by coherence that it becomes mesmerizing—alien impregnation, creature births, body horror played as everyday nightmare. Trashy, transgressive, totally committed to its own strangeness.

But The production is genuinely cheap in ways that show on screen. Plot is secondary to visceral sensation, and the tonal whiplash between domestic drama and acid-trip sci-fi will frustrate anyone wanting clarity.