Security is tight, but just as play is about to begin, an audience member shouts "Death to the Demoness Allegra Gellar" as he shoots her with a grotesque biomechanical pistol, wounding her. The guards shoot the assassin and Gellar flees with marketing intern Ted Pikul (Jude Law), who grabs the strange weapon.
Paranoid that this may have been an inside job, the reclusive Gellar makes Ted discard his phone and the pair go into hiding. Once safe she is concerned that the one and only copy of this multi-million dollar five year development project may have been damaged and persuades Ted the only way to tell is to play it with somebody friendly. However, Ted Pikul has never played one of the company's games before and to do so requires implanted hardware.
No good will come of this.
CW: Cronenberg delivers gruesome biomechanical/mutant visuals, often in a slaughterhouse style. Also eating repulsive stuff and things like pulling out your own teeth. Not in a horror movie torture way but a completely casual manner like it's just something that happens.
Some of the 90s movies I've watched recently have not stood up well to the test of time. This was something that blew my mind at the time and I worried it too would have tarnished.
I needn't have worried, I think this has actually become more relevant.
Kind of pitched as a Jude Law vehicle, Jennifer Jason Leigh has more range on show as she flips from shy designer at the start to sensually aroused architect in the game and then again as they play through different layers. Meanwhile Jude Law mainly has to maintain his "reluctant virgin" piece. There are great supporting roles from people like Ian Holm and Willem Dafoe.
Cronenberg's vision of alternative future technology created from genetically engineered grotesque amphibians and pieced together in slaughterhouses is grim but internally consistent. Even the phone discarded early on in the film looks like a blobby sex toy.
This has lots to say about the nature of games, the boundaries we set ourselves in the real world as opposed to play and the sort of experience we have in truly great multiplayer online games or LARP where you completely become your character and struggle to let go.
Kind of dismissed at the time because of the grotesque elements it is better commentary on or portrayal of these things than The Matrix or Inception.
It is one of the masterpieces of 90s sci-fi cinema, 10/10, if you haven't seen it do so. The only thing that spoils it is the last line of dialogue, which feels like somebody else added it after a test screening.
If you have seen it but not for a while, this is your cue to watch it again but please no spoilers for anybody who hasn't.