eXistenZ (1999, David Cronenberg)

🎮🔫🔌🫀🩸🦠🙂 The search for a 1999 horror alternative to Blair Witch. A virtual reality gaming cautionary tale I never heard of, from back when virtual reality scared people. Star power. Cronenberg prioritizes the absurdly weird and grotesque more than a grounded story or characters. Has a 1950s black-and-white Martian science fiction feel. The surreal dialog is oddly compelling. The gross squicky organic creature gags are utterly irrelevant. But the warning about getting too immersed in games is still a valid message, regardless of the clumsiness (real life death threats against game developers are extremely common now). I didn’t want to like this, but I kind of did. (PlutoTV.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existenz