68
Metascore
55 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangLos Angeles TimesJustin ChangIt’s marvelous to have Cronenberg back and to behold his undimmed, unparalleled skill at welding the formulations of horror and science fiction to the cinema of ideas.
- 83IndieWireDavid EhrlichIndieWireDavid EhrlichCrimes of the Future is Cronenberg to the core, complete with its fair share of authorial flourishes (the moaning organic bed that its characters sleep in is a five-alarm nightmare unto itself) and slogans (“surgery is the new sex”). At the same time, however, this hazy and weirdly hopeful meditation on the macro-relationship between organic life and synthetic matter ties into his more wholly satisfying gross-out classics because of how it pushes beyond them.
- 83The PlaylistCharles BramescoThe PlaylistCharles BramescoJust as [Cronenberg’s] characters can live in a suspended state of rot, he can thrive within a world and culture in its death throes. In his reenergized perspectives on degeneration, he’s created one last safe haven for his fellow degenerates.
- 80The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawIt’s an extraordinary planet that Cronenberg lands us down on, and insists we remove our helmets before we’re quite sure we can breathe the air.
- 80Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganScreen DailyFionnuala HalliganIt’s a piece which is deliberate, but not sterile; disturbing, but too grounded in reality to be truly frightening, even though it probably should be given it attempts to blend the fears of body horror with climate change.
- 80VarietyOwen GleibermanVarietyOwen GleibermanThe movie, like so many Cronenberg films, is a gut-twister that is really, just underneath, a painstakingly chewed-over and cerebral experience. It’s an outré nightmare that keeps telling you what to think about what it means.
- 68TheWrapAlonso DuraldeTheWrapAlonso DuraldeAt his most memorable, Cronenberg creates viscerally unforgettable images that horrify, yes, but they also provoke with big, shocking ideas about our very selves – the monstrousness of disease, the perhaps inevitable hybrid of the corporeal and the mechanical, the determination of the self. With Crimes of the Future, we’re left with a remove from the material, where no matter what happens, it’s all just performance art.
- 63Vanity FairRichard LawsonVanity FairRichard LawsonIt’s a movie full of ideas that are never quite unified into a thesis. A bunch of wild imagery and grim hypotheticals about what could become of us may be enough for some viewers. Others, like me, will be left prodding away, trying to locate more meat on all of these ornately assembled bones.
- 60The TelegraphRobbie CollinThe TelegraphRobbie CollinSeydoux gives the film’s best performance: even wrenching moments are played at a glassy remove. But unlike Cronenberg’s Crash, which shook Cannes to the core in 1996, there’s no shock of the new in Crimes of the Future – a crucial requirement for every true festival coup de scandale.
- 60The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe film offers up more mysteries than it solves. Still, riveting work from Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux as performance artists whose canvas is internal organ mutations will draw the curious.