Trailer: David Cronenberg returns to icky sci-fi with 'Crimes of the Future'

Once upon a time, filmmaker David Cronenberg was synonymous with twisted sci-fi / body horror that really put the viscera in visceral, be it blowing up people’s’ heads in Scanners, letting Jeff Goldblum find his inner insect in The Fly, or having Jeremy Irons play identical twin gynecologists in Dead Ringers. (Then there’s Crash.) He hasn’t made a gutsy sci-fi film since 1999’s underrated Existenz, but he’s finally returning to familiar icky territory with Crimes of the Future.

Cronenberg has already made a movie titled Crimes of the Future, from 1970 (it was his second film), but this is not a remake. This new film stars Viggo Mortensen, who’s been in a number of Cronenberg films, along with Léa Seydoux, and Kristen Stewart, and here’s the synopsis which includes the phrase “metamorphosis of his organs”:

As the human species adapts to a synthetic environment, the body undergoes new transformations and mutations. With his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux), Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), celebrity performance artist, publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances. Timlin (Kristen Stewart), an investigator from the National Organ Registry, obsessively tracks their movements, which is when a mysterious group is revealed… Their mission – to use Saul’s notoriety to shed light on the next phase of human evolution.

Crimes of the Future will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and be in theaters via NEON in June. They’ve just released the first trailer, which looks promisingly weird and unsettling. Watch, and check out the film’s poster, below.