A mellower, low-saturation story told in the “Repo! the Genetic Opera Universe” that isn’t about rich people, but about horny performance artists. Also, the pandemic here is novel organs rather than organ failure–but I think you get my drift.
I just watched Hellraiser yesterday and they have one basic similarity – in the commingling of pain and pleasure, losing the lines that distinguish them. It’s interesting how Hellraiser was so violent and desecrating, but Crimes of the Future felt sensual and rapturous.
Normally i do not watch, much less recommend, movies that not only make the death of a child central to the story, but starts off the movie showing the mother killing a child. (Not a spoiler, it’s literally the first five minutes.) But the emotional temperature is so turned down that it didn’t bother me.
Everyone is so mellow in this movie, mostly – well, it more seems like numb than mellow. Pleasure isn’t pleasure anymore. Surgery is sex. They only feel anything when they’re being gored. Léa Seydoux fellates Viggo Mortensen’s viscera and makes it feel like a normal moment of intimacy between a long-time couple.
I’m always more into horror aesthetic with dark themes rather than horror itself, strictly speaking, and that’s what that was. Delicious, weird, lovely, grimy, bleak, warm, loving. I want Viggo Mortensen’s wardrobe.
(Image credit: Vertigo Releasing. This review was originally posted on Letterboxd on Jan 25, 2023.)
