Crimes of the Future is batshit crazy and the absolute epitome of a David Cronenberg film. Unfortunately for me it was also one of his virtually unwatchable art projects. Read on with the knowledge that I will in no way be able to do the insanity of this project any justice. 

At some point in the future of human evolution people have evolved to not feel pain. In this world mutilation and cutting each other has become erotic. Surgery is the new sex. 

The government are concerned that some people are evolving too far outside of what a human should and begin to keep tabs on new human organs within a secret department. Meanwhile there is a rebel group of people who believe in the need to evolve to the point where we can eat our own plastic industrial waste. To evolve in sync with our technology. 

Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) is one such human whose body is able to create new organs. As an act of rejection he has surgeon Caprice (Lea Seydoux) tattoo his organs whilst they are still inside them and then cut them from his body in front of a live audience as a form of performance art. 

Other characters involved in the insane plot are Wippet (Don McKellar) and Timlin (Kristen Stewart) who work in the office that registers organs. Router (Nadia Litz) and Berst (Tanaya Beatty) who work on some of the bizarre tools of the time that help people to sleep, eat and perform surgery. Whilst Lang (Scott Speedman) is part of the resistance. 

The imagery is striking and some of the machines could never be imagined outside of a Cronenberg movie. It is also not for the faint hearted with some quite gruesome body horror. The whole thing is complemented by a dark dystopian score by Howard Shore. 

The acting cast mostly whisper their lines in a hushed awe. So much so that I actually turned the subtitles on, because the plot is so bizarre that it was hard enough to understand what was going on without picking up every single word that was being said. 

What is Cronenberg saying exactly? That government’s are afraid of people altering their bodies outside of the status quo? That the only way to solve the problem of plastic waste is to evolve to eat it? 

But more importantly does it even matter if the end result is utterly devoid of all enjoyment?