eXistenZ: Another Day in 2026

Another week, another Cronenberg. This time we have his Y2K dive into the wonderful world of video games. Of course, he does it in his way: people play games with fleshy controllers connected to them via “bioports” embedded in their spines. But, as usual, he trains his eye on the fundamentally human, the tangible—in a word, the real.

The core of the film, which comes with a dizzying bevy of twists and turns I won’t reveal here, is Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Fuse Samuel Bankman-Fried and Todd Howard, transition him, and you’ll approximate Ms. Geller. She’s obsessed with her new game, eXistenZ, the purpose of which you only learn as you play it. It is, in other words, a metaphor for life itself, or perhaps more accurately, an attempt to replace life with an equally pointless (or meaningful) simulacrum. Her obsession leads her to use people, most notably her “bodyguard” Ted Pikul (Jude Law). He’s not much of a gamer; he’s got no bioport. But, since he is all’s she’s got as she flees anti-gamer assassins, Allegra turns to him, forces him to enter the world of eXistenZ.

What Cronenberg seems to have glimpsed long before others is the life-supplanting power of video games. We now speak of “chat” in everyday life. People watch people watch people play video games. Discord, Roblox, Minecraft—I could go on and on. We’re all Allegra Geller now, or at least we live in her world. Somehow, it all feels like the key to understanding our psychic, if not our physical reality. Though there are no bioports (yet).

But I don’t want to give the impression that eXistenZ (1999) is a didactic movie. Far, far from it. This is Cronenberg after all. But, if you haven’t seen it—or seen it recently—take the plunge into eXistenZ. Past the Y2K capital letters, there’s much of contemporary interest here.