[Evan Waters looks at movies, books and comics at Club Parnassus.]
eXistenZ has a bit of a place in my heart. It was the first David Cronenberg film I saw theatrically, having more or less discovered the man's work on video the year before. That was in 1999, a strange and far-off land, and seeing it in the immediate aftermath of the Columbine shootings—with media violence and video games in particular targeted as influences—made it resonate strongly. A decade later, it holds up in very unusual ways; it's unconventional even for Cronenberg and is a bit awkward in terms of how it's built and put together, but the sheer audacious oddness of it pulls us through and animates it with a unique energy.
