A Cronenbergian clone: the movie David Cronenberg said failed “for all sorts of reasons”
People who make movies like David Cronenberg aren’t seeking to be embraced by the mainstream, with his intoxicating blend of psychological thrills, sensuality, and body horror tending to be an acquired taste that many filmgoers have never picked up.
Not that he’s spent his career as an outsider existing on the fringes of Hollywood without ever enjoying a breakthrough, though, but it’s not difficult to understand why he’s become just as accustomed to failure as success. When he hits, he hits big, and when he misses, it’s much the same.
His highest-grossing film remains A History of Violence, which makes sense in a way because it’s perhaps his most accessible. Adapted from a graphic novel, it’s a revenge thriller in the broadest sense, so it was a lot easier to market to a mass audience than something like Videodrome, which was far from being a moneymaking machine despite its status as one of Cronenberg’s best.
Scanners was definitely a turning point, and even at that, it was the seventh feature of his career. The gruesome favourite was the first time one of his films had made a splash in America, and he went on to enter the cinematic lexicon when subsequent flicks, including the aforementioned Videodrome, The Fly, Crash, and Existenz, turned Cronenbergian into a world-renowned term.
Movies don’t have to be directed by Cronenberg to be dubbed Cronenbergian, of course, and the originator is happy to point out the titles he thinks fell short. It may have been a huge hit that earned close to $120million at the box office, but Philip Noyce’s salacious erotic thriller Sliver was resoundingly panned by critics for focusing on wanton titillation above all else.
Comparing it to the voyeuristic aspect of his own work, Cronenberg explained to Film Comment that “you suddenly have magical access to strangers’ places, their bathrooms and their bedrooms, and it’s quite odd.” However, whereas he made a point of exploring the “voyeuristic element to the feeling of having access,” he didn’t think Noyce’s film did it well enough for his liking.
“The movie Sliver, even though it failed for all kinds of reasons, had that idea, and that reminded me of some of the feeling that there is in Shivers,” he suggested by using an entry from his own back catalogue as a counterpoint. There was a heavy dose of voyeurism to be found, but Cronenberg didn’t believe it was incorporated well enough into the Sharon Stone-fronted story, an approach he clearly didn’t care for.
Because it was an erotic thriller released in the early 1990s, Sliver was a hit. In fact, it earned more from cinemas than any film Cronenberg has ever made. And yet, despite being spoken of in Cronenbergian terms at the time, the man himself didn’t think it was worthy of the billing.
