CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS?

Aside from Dario Argento, David Cronenberg is probably the last giant of horror cinema's Golden Age still working. John Carpenter has effectively retired except for occasional scoring duties, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper and George Romero have gone, and Sam Raimi has decamped to major league superhero movies. And since Existenz back in 1999, Cronenberg himself has largely abandoned the gloopy body horror genre he practically created, in favour of cerebral dramas such as Spider and A Dangerous Method and odd, uncategorisable films like Cosmopolis and Maps To The Stars. Crimes Of The Future is certainly back in his trademark territory: graphic but strangely bloodless gore, twisted flesh, impenetrable and inaccessible characters, musings on humanity and what it will become.

In an unspecified place (some signs are in English, some in Greek), and an unspecified future in which there are no computers and mobile phones are the size of walkie-talkies, pain no longer exists and some people are able to grow new organs inside themselves. Saul and Caprice Tenser (Viggo Mortensen, Lea Seydoux) are performance artists whose show consists of him lying in a modified biomechanical autopsy machine removing strange new organs. (Even as a highly niche novelty act, public surgery is not going to make it past the first round of Britain's Got Talent or any Saturday night game show.) Meanwhile, a woman has killed her young son because of his ability - inherited rather than engineered - to consume otherwise non-biodegradable plastic, and a public autopsy might reveal what this could mean for the environmental future of the human race...

The trouble with Crimes Of The Future (which has nothing to do with his own 1970 film of the same name) is that it's too slow. It's not a long film by any stretch, at 107 minutes, but it's oddly lifeless, it has no pace and no urgency about it, leaving you feeling frustrated. It's also grim and humourless, even by Cronenberg's standards: he's never been the man you go to for laughs but the film has such a sombre and oppressive tone to it that it really needed some hint of levity or lightness, and Kristen Stewart's flighty secretary from the New Organ Registry wasn't enough. Granted, it has its moments of graphic physical gore, as well as frank nudity and sex scenes (left untouched in the UK for an 18 certificate), but it's all weirdly inert and has none of the visceral punch you'd expect, to the extent that Crimes Of The Future actually ends up on screen as boring, believe it or not. Hard to imagine why people allegedly walked out of the film at Cannes, unless they remembered they'd got some ironing to do.

Cronenberg is nearly 80 years old now, so it's perhaps unreasonable to expect the same impact as the full-on grue of The Fly, Videodrome or Rabid, any more than you'd expect the latest Dario Argento to operate on the same level as Suspiria or Deep Red. But I was surprised how little energy there was to it. It has its fascinating ideas, and some strikingly peculiar imagery (such as Mortensen's bed, like a giant insect from Naked Lunch or something, that's designed to move him around to ease his pain), but they can barely survive a film that makes you wonder if you didn't nod off half way through and miss a crucial scene or two. I don't think I did, but I shouldn't even be wondering that, certainly not in a David Cronenberg film. I did struggle with it, and for all that the King Of Venereal Horror has finally returned to the scene of his early, yukky triumphs, it's to surprisingly little effect. A massive disappointment.

*

DARK GLASSES

CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS

There aren't many directors around these days for whom the prospect of a brand new work is one to be greeted with some excitement. Many times the thought of a new film by a major film-maker has to be tempered with the knowledge that their days of legend and glory are a long way behind them and their recent efforts have been, shall we say, disappointing. (One thinks of Brian De Palma: no matter what happens, we're never getting another Dressed To Kill or Blow Out.) Perhaps the most frustrating case has been that of the mighty Dario Argento: so many highlights (Terror At The Opera, Deep Red, Tenebrae) but the second half of his filmography has been patchy, with little of the expected delirious visual flair and overdirection. Sleepless was decent enough, and I still like Do You Like Hitchcock? as a light, throwaway diversion, but with the best will in the world Dracula and Mother Of Tears were not good at all.

Dark Glasses (Occhiali Neri) sees Argento move back not wholly to the giallo, but at least to the contemporary serial killer thriller territory he's most famous for (and possibly most comfortable with). In this instance it's an unseen killer murdering sex workers with thin steel wire. His latest target Diana (Ilenia Pastorelli) escapes but is blinded in the subsequent pursuit which also leaves a young Chinese boy orphaned; the two team up unaware that the killer is still after her...

Despite the lack of blimey! plot twists, the narrative is as wonky as you'd expect: for one thing the plot hinges on the idea that there's only one white van in the whole of Rome, and for another it begins with a solar eclipse that's actually got nothing to do with the main action and is only there as a nod to Antonioni's L'Eclisse (it's not even there as a nod to Inferno!). The murder plot is also pretty much put on hold for a reel or two while we focus on the relationship between Diana and the young boy. And aside from the first killing and the maniac's gory demise (a bloodier version of a death scene from Suspiria), the violence is mostly far less graphic than usual. We don't even see the first two murders: we're merely informed by the police that this one is the third, and while there's no mystery as to the killer's identity, which is revealed in the most matter-of-fact way imaginable, there's absolutely no clue as to why he's doing it.

The thing about Argento is that the heights are so high they're practically impossible to match, but the same goes for the lows. Dark Glasses doesn't come anywhere close to Argento's wildest and greatest works, inevitably, but it never sinks to the bottom either. It won't win over any converts but it won't anger the diehard Tenebrites either. It looks absolutely wonderful, magnificently photographed by Mattheo Cocco, though one misses the sounds of Goblin on the soundtrack (the score by Arnaud Rebotini, whose work I'm not familiar with, might grow on me with subsequent listens). In the end Dark Glasses is a solid three-star movie, neither masterpiece nor disaster, and not even close to either, but comfortably in the middle. I liked it enough and wouldn't balk at the idea of having the film on my BluRay shelf.

***