Director David Cronenberg’s films have always been infused with bugs, slime, body parts and ooze; here again he seizes the opportunity to wallow in his coveted laboratory goo. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays an uber-hip Gen-X game designer sometime in the near future where humans are fitted with bio-ports, so that they can plug into their own personal games boys and drop into a virtual universe. During a market test of her new game, “eXistenZ,” a failed assassination attempt by a realist revolutionary disrupts the game, leaving the participants in an edgy limbo somewhere between reality and game land. The absurd, surreal texture of the film instantiates as overt and silly, but as the stakes become increasingly outlandish, it wears on comfortably. “eXistenZ” is dead-on for Cronenberg fans though the mutant reptile and amphibian factory might be a tad(pole) too much for the squeamish at heart.
