Existenz: a ’90s VR body-horror masterpiece

Long before the Metaverse, Oculus, or Charlie Brooker's speculative TV, David Cronenberg explored virtual reality in his fleshy, frantic film Existenz. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the alluring game designer Allegra Geller, with Jude Law as her uneasy protector Ted Pikul and Willem Dafoe turning up as the grinningly unnerving gas station owner, Gas.

The premise is simple and strange: Geller is on the run from assassins who use guns made of bone and teeth, and she enlists Pikul to guard her latest creation, the titular game. The console itself is a pulsating, flesh-colored pod with an umbilical cord that plugs into a hole in the user's spine, and once characters jack in the film repeatedly blurs the line between game and reality.

Cronenberg mines both horror and dark comedy from the idea of virtual life. NPC behavior and canned dialogue become unnerving when waiters repeatedly loop the same lines until a player triggers a scripted response, and characters experience violent urges they cannot fully control.

existenz, david cronenberg, virtual reality, body horror, allegra geller, jason leigh, jude law, willem dafoe, game console, metaverse