
Allegra Geller, the leading game designer in the world, is testing her new virtual reality game, eXistenZ with a focus group. As they begin, she is attacked by a fanatic assassin employing a bizarre organic gun. She flees with a young marketing trainee, Ted Pikul, who is suddenly assigned as her bodyguard. Unfortunately, her pod, an organic gaming device that contains the only copy of the eXistenZ game program, is damaged. To inspect it, she talks Ted into accepting a gamepor... (Full plot summary below)
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Allegra Geller, the leading game designer in the world, is testing her new virtual reality game, eXistenZ with a focus group. As they begin, she is attacked by a fanatic assassin employing a bizarre organic gun. She flees with a young marketing trainee, Ted Pikul, who is suddenly assigned as her bodyguard. Unfortunately, her pod, an organic gaming device that contains the only copy of the eXistenZ game program, is damaged. To inspect it, she talks Ted into accepting a gameport in his own body so he can play the game with her. The events leading up to this, and the resulting game lead the pair on a strange adventure where reality and their actions are impossible to determine from either their own or the game's perspective.
Leave your thoughts about eXistenZ.
| Film Journal InternationalPeter HenneThe biggest flaw is the film's patent lack of a life pulse |
| Combustible CelluloidJeffrey M. AndersonFans may find certain similarities between eXistenZ and Videodrome bothersome, but both films are the real thing. |
| eFilmCritic.comRob Gonsalves[Cronenberg is] a laughing existentialist here, a philosopher who sees the comedy in disorientation. |
| San Francisco ChronicleBob GrahamLeigh is perfectly cast as the game-pod goddess. |
| Film ThreatRon WellsThis is not light-hearted entertainment. Be prepared to think. Uncle Dave will take you someplace new. |
| L.A. WeeklyF. X. FeeneyeXistenZ gives us Cronenberg at his wittiest, and Leigh at her most vulnerable and fascinating. |
| Los Angeles TimesKevin ThomasThe Cronenberg trademarks are here in full force, including an outrageous sexual suggestiveness in his bizarre special effects. |
| Chicago TribuneMichael WilmingtonLike the virtual game he plays on us, the film is weird, it's addictive, and Lord, it's alive! |
| San Francisco ExaminerWesley MorrisAt last, with his ecstatic, spellbinding, madly original eXistenZ, Cronenberg suppresses his yen for being a mere provocateur and makes an inspired, ingenious film that wants to be more than the stuff bad dreams are made of. |
| Film BlatherEugene NovikovIt is a movie that exists in almost a dreamlike state, eminently watchable but too bizarre to really involve its audience personally. That is not a criticism, but only a statement. |