Crimes of the Future
Neon | Release Date: June 3, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
68
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 55 Critic Reviews
Positive:
33
Mixed:
19
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Rolling StoneDavid FearJun 2, 2022
This is what the work of a visionary filmmaker looks like. Forget the new flesh. Long live the old Cronenberg. Read full review
96
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzAug 30, 2022
Crimes of the Future is a dirty little thing because it dives deep into the muck of humanity, where Cronenberg finds a perverted pleasure in the absence of pain. Every millimetre of this film is filthy, decayed, polluted. And thank god for that. Read full review
90
Little White LiesSarah ClearySep 9, 2022
Cronenberg’s latest feels more like a late-in-the-day course correction than a victory lap. It’s a self reflexive film, yes, but it isn’t self-congratulatory. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisJun 2, 2022
Despite the morbid laughs and the beatific smile that can light up Saul’s face like that of St. Teresa of Ávila, Crimes of the Future feels like a requiem. Cronenberg has always been a diagnostician of the human condition; here, he also feels a lot like a mortician. Read full review
90
SlashfilmChris EvangelistaMay 31, 2022
Crimes of the Future is Cronenberg in his comfort zone, which is a zone choked with things both repulsive and fascinating. It's not quite as nasty as its pre-release reputation suggests, nor is it even the most graphic film Cronenberg has directed. But it's rife with the filmmaker's signatures and quirks; his fetishes and his dreams; his obsessions and his amusements. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMay 23, 2022
It’s marvelous to have Cronenberg back and to behold his undimmed, unparalleled skill at welding the formulations of horror and science fiction to the cinema of ideas. Read full review
88
ABC NewsPeter TraversJun 3, 2022
Is surgery the new sex? Body horror maestro David Cronenberg and a cast led by Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux and Kristen Stewart tackle that question and more in a futuristic sci-fi shocker that will leave you laughing, squirming and—yikes—thinking. Read full review
83
The Film StageRory O'ConnorMay 26, 2022
It’s dazzling and uneven, seductive and flawed, and only [Cronenberg] could have made it. There’s no beating the genuine article. Read full review
83
The PlaylistCharles BramescoMay 23, 2022
Just as [Cronenberg’s] characters can live in a suspended state of rot, he can thrive within a world and culture in its death throes. In his reenergized perspectives on degeneration, he’s created one last safe haven for his fellow degenerates. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 23, 2022
Crimes of the Future is Cronenberg to the core, complete with its fair share of authorial flourishes (the moaning organic bed that its characters sleep in is a five-alarm nightmare unto itself) and slogans (“surgery is the new sex”). At the same time, however, this hazy and weirdly hopeful meditation on the macro-relationship between organic life and synthetic matter ties into his more wholly satisfying gross-out classics because of how it pushes beyond them. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeSep 9, 2022
The picture doesn’t reach out and grab you. It doesn’t fling viscera in your face. It hangs around outside your house, half hidden in shadow, and gradually insinuates malaise. So, no, not comfort food. Read full review
80
EmpireSimon CrookSep 6, 2022
Hypnotic, maddening, pervy and disturbing. In other words, vintage Cronenberg. The doomy slow-burn won’t be to all tastes, but its abstract, feverish images are pure nightmare fuel. Read full review
80
NMESamuel MooreSep 5, 2022
Cronenberg playing through the hits is better than most directors’ best work. He’s a filmmaker who has always had apocalyptic visions of humanity: they’re all here and they do hit in a sharp way. Read full review
80
Paste MagazineJacob OllerJun 2, 2022
Digging into the art world’s juicy guts and suturing it up as a compelling, ambitious sci-fi noir, Crimes of the Future thrills, even if it leaves a few stray narrative implements sewn into its scarred cavities. Read full review
80
VarietyOwen GleibermanMay 23, 2022
The movie, like so many Cronenberg films, is a gut-twister that is really, just underneath, a painstakingly chewed-over and cerebral experience. It’s an outré nightmare that keeps telling you what to think about what it means. Read full review
80
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganMay 23, 2022
It’s a piece which is deliberate, but not sterile; disturbing, but too grounded in reality to be truly frightening, even though it probably should be given it attempts to blend the fears of body horror with climate change. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 23, 2022
It’s an extraordinary planet that Cronenberg lands us down on, and insists we remove our helmets before we’re quite sure we can breathe the air. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJun 3, 2022
Rhythmically Crimes of the Future maintains a rigorous sense of calm throughout, which can get a little pokey in some scenes. But Mortensen, Seydoux and especially Stewart invest fully, so some of us, anyway, can too. Read full review
75
USA TodayBrian TruittJun 2, 2022
Cronenberg has crafted a story that brings together what we do to our bodies to feel and look good – though that’s sometimes in the eye of the beholder – and the synthetic materials that play a key role in both our modern lives and environmental crises. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJun 1, 2022
While there are times when Cronenberg seems to be indulging in his trademark gross-out visuals for the sake of shock, Crimes of the Future is darkly funny and consistently thoughtful — and, for all its moments of extreme horror, offers legitimate commentary on issues such as body dysmorphia and the extreme measures taken by some real-world individuals in order to carve, sculpt and tattoo their bodies as evolving canvasses of expression. Read full review
75
The Associated PressLindsey BahrJun 1, 2022
It may be more mystifying than illuminating when all is said and done, but it is certainly a uniquely captivating experience with wildly imaginative creations, interesting performances, challenging ideas and one of the best scores of the year. Read full review
75
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonMay 27, 2022
If you’re a diehard fan of Cronenberg, you’ll still enjoy his latest, even if it doesn’t exactly break the mold of eXistenZ or his other fleshy experiments. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineMark HansonMay 27, 2022
David Cronenberg stares upon humanity’s need to evolve toward some kind of survival with a serene, godlike assurance. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comTomris LafflyMay 24, 2022
It’s not exactly revolutionary, and more alarming than scary. But it’s still provocatively feverish stuff from the dearly missed vintage annals of Cronenberg. Read full review
70
SlateDana StevensJun 6, 2022
At any rate, this movie’s insistent and unapologetic commitment to its own weirdness is evidence that the 79-year-old writer-director, like the ever-mutating human specimens he loves to imagine, is nowhere near done evolving. Read full review
70
PolygonJesse HassengerJun 2, 2022
The movie gets livelier every time Stewart appears, as if on a contact high from her intoxication. Crimes of the Future needs those extra jolts of weirded-out star power. In spite of its arresting imagery, it’s sometimes more engaging to think about than to actually watch. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJun 1, 2022
Certainly the film, which Cronenberg also wrote, is a comment on celebrity culture, on environmental disaster, on relationships, all filtered through a Cronenberg lens. If you’re seen “The Brood” or “Videodrome” or “The Fly,” you know how bizarre and horrifying that lens can be. Read full review
68
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeMay 23, 2022
At his most memorable, Cronenberg creates viscerally unforgettable images that horrify, yes, but they also provoke with big, shocking ideas about our very selves – the monstrousness of disease, the perhaps inevitable hybrid of the corporeal and the mechanical, the determination of the self. With Crimes of the Future, we’re left with a remove from the material, where no matter what happens, it’s all just performance art. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerJun 1, 2022
Crimes may lack the incisive wittiness of eXistenZ or the suppurating nightmares of The Fly, but even lesser Cronenbergian body horror is something to behold. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubJordan HoffmanMay 23, 2022
Nothing about it makes a lick of sense, but there’s a surreal flow to it all that, in the moment, carries you from scene to scene. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyJun 1, 2022
Crimes of the Future works better as sort-of treatise than sort-of thriller. It’s a paradoxical thing to say about a filmmaker as intensely visual as Cronenberg, but his ideas are even more shocking than his images. Read full review
63
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenJun 1, 2022
We’re largely left with an arresting return to the sort of wild work Cronenberg delivered in the 1980s and 1990s, if one where the shock is ironically missing. Read full review
63
Vanity FairRichard LawsonMay 23, 2022
It’s a movie full of ideas that are never quite unified into a thesis. A bunch of wild imagery and grim hypotheticals about what could become of us may be enough for some viewers. Others, like me, will be left prodding away, trying to locate more meat on all of these ornately assembled bones. Read full review
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