Shedding his skin: has David Cronenberg become too pretentious?
Once upon a time, there was a director who brought all of your subconscious paranoias and existential fears to life through fleshy creatures, bulging abscesses and goopy special effects. The work of David Cronenberg was championed for its dark comedy and visceral horror, with the Canadian filmmaker toying with the cinematic form to create movies that frolicked in their mere existence while clawing at the viewers’ own impression of the world around them.
A little more intellectual than the work of his pulp horror peer John Carpenter, Cronenberg’s films were thoughtful without being pretentious, with his 1983 movie Videodrome considered by many to be a gripping thriller and an interesting comment on modern media, in equal parts. Frequently bordering this fine line, Cronenberg continued his dedication to horror and sci-fi with follow-ups like 1983’s Dead Zone and 1986’s The Fly before segueing his tastes to being far more philosophical in the 1990s.
Having been close friends with Carpenter, whose own films 1982’s The Thing and 1988’s They Live feel ripped from Cronenberg’s own hymn sheet, there’s no doubt that the latter began to riff in entirely new directions. While ‘90s flicks like Crash demonstrate this, it’s his modern films like Crimes of the Future that show the biggest change in styles, entirely embracing the intellectualism of his early works.
For Carpenter, who hasn’t made a movie since 2010, this change doesn’t sit quite right. “He’s an old friend of mine, and unfortunately, he takes himself so seriously these days,” he recently stated in respect to a group meeting where Cronenberg was in attendance, “He’s an ‘artist’ now…He didn’t look at me. I thought, ‘There’s enough of this, forget it. I don’t need this anymore.’”
Looking back over Cronenberg’s recent history on the silver screen, it’s difficult not to see where Carpenter is coming from either, with the maverick horror creative seemingly abandoning his roots for the likes of Crimes of the Future, Maps to the Stars and Cosmopolis. Each existing in a shared dreamworld of sorts that criticises capitalist culture with veils thick and thin, these films certainly don’t have as much fun with their concepts as his earlier works, being stuck in a stiff self-seriousness.
The essence of this same tone has long been felt throughout Cronenberg’s films, however, going back to his debut, with each of his movies being influenced by some psychological or philosophical concept that spoke to the existential nature of humanity. His tendency towards body horror is, indeed, inherently philosophical, with films like The Fly, Dead Ringers and even Naked Lunch speaking to what it means to be human, inside and out.
These concepts still exist in his contemporary movies, but he’s toned down on the carnivalesque body horror to draw more attention to the self-serious sci-fi concepts at the heart of his stories. Such could indeed be perceived as pretentious, yet he is merely acting like any great creative who has dominated their respective space for generations, evolving to tell different stories in different ways and styles.
Whether these stories are good or not will depend on your cinematic tastes, with Cronenberg bringing arthouse lovers a new form of excavating terror in contemporary cinema, even if more traditional fans of pulpy horror may feel let down.
Though David Cronenberg may have shed his creative skin, leaving behind a void of joyous sci-fi horror flicks that put concept first, it is his offspring that have picked up the flack, clearly inspired by their father’s work in the late 20th century. With Brandon Cronenberg releasing the terrifying Infinity Pool in 2023 and Caitlin Cronenberg soon to be releasing the fun-loving horror Humane to the world, never has the tagline “long live the new flesh” made so much sense.
