David Cronenberg’s ‘Crimes of the Future’ Teaser Trailer Grows New Organs

Director David Cronenberg returns to the horror genre this year with the new thriller Crimes of the Future, starring Kristen Stewart, Viggo Mortensen, and Léa Seydoux, and the official teaser trailer released today is as crazy you should expect from the man behind The Fly, Nightbreed, and Videodrome.

Here’s the full synopsis: In a not-so-distant future, humankind is learning to adapt to its synthetic surroundings. Their biological makeup changed, many humans have adapted to life with “Accelerated Evolution Syndrome” thanks partly to specialized equipment that aids in everything from eating to sleeping.

Beloved performance artist Saul Tenser sleeps in a womb-like bed suspended in mid-air. The Orchid Bed, as it’s called, comes complete with software to anticipate, and adjust his every bodily need. The machine even detects the growth of new organs, which Saul’s creative partner Caprice can observe and tattoo in his personal operating theatre. Together, Saul and Caprice have turned the discovery and removal of these new body organs into performance art, via sold-out voyeuristic surgical shows using a sarcophagus-like machine where the surgeries take place.

These human evolutionary changes do not receive universal positivity. Before long, a new secret government entity is established -the National Organ Registry, led by bureaucrats Wippet and Timlin – to discreetly track new organ growths, with particular enthusiasm for Saul’s artistic anomalies.

With increased scrutiny on the syndrome and therefore his art, Saul is forced to consider what would be his most shocking performance of all.

In a statement, Cronenberg said, “Crimes of the Future is a meditation on human evolution. Specifically – the ways in which we have had to take control of the process because we have created such powerful environments that did not exist previously. Crimes of the Future is an evolution of things I have done before. Fans will see key references to other scenes and moments from my other films. That’s a continuity of my understanding of technology as connected to the human body.

“Technology is always an extension of the human body, even when it seems to be very mechanical and non-human. A fist becomes enhanced by a club or a stone that you throw – but ultimately, that club or stone is an extension of some potency that the human body already has. At this critical junction in human history, one wonders – can the human body evolve to solve problems we have created? Can the human body evolve a process to digest plastics and artificial materials not only as part of a solution to the climate crisis, but also, to grow, thrive, and survive?”

The cast also includes Scott Speedman (Underworld), Welket Bungué (Berlin Alexanderplatz), Don McKellar (Blindness, eXistenZ), Yorgos Pirpassopoulos (Beckett, Monday), Tanaya Beatty (Yellowstone, Through Black Spruce), Nadia Litz (Big Muddy, Hotel Congress, Blindness), Lihi Kornowski (Losing Alice), and Denise Capezza (Gomorrah).

Neon will distribute Crimes of the Future in the U.S., but as of this writing, a release date has not yet been announced.

You can watch the official teaser trailer and see the official poster below.

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