“It is time to stop seeing,” is the first line of voice-over dialogue in the trailer for “Crime of the Future,” David Cronenberg’s first film in nearly a decade.
It may as well be warning to you, dear watcher.
Continue on at your own level of tolerance for creepy medical procedures performed by insectoid robots, a guy with ears growing from his forehead with eyes and mouth stitched shut … that sort of casual cinematic pleasantry.
“Crimes of the Future,” the same title as one of Cronenberg’s very early features (though not narratively related) appears to be another level of deeply uncomfortable body horror from the gentleman who brought us other movies to watch through our fingers, like “The Fly” and “A History of Violence.”
Check out the trailer, released Thursday by distributor Neon, below:
Starting Viggo Mortensen, Kristen Stewart and Léa Seydoux, “Crimes of the Future” will world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this spring.
According to the logline from Neon, “Crimes” takes place after humans have adapted to a “synthetic environment” in which the body can be transformed and mutated. Mortensen plays a famous performance artist whose medium is putting these procedures on display; Stewart is an investigator who is tracking his efforts to mess with human evolution.
You can catch those parts of the film you don’t look away from in U.S. theaters this June.