eXistenZ

Second time round, this one (if I've remembered correctly) having been another that I originally caught on the big screen in the months between high school and university. I'm pretty sure that it was my first Cronenberg (not that there've been all that many since), but I have a feeling that I was already enthused about JJL at the time, at least if the magazine cover dated July 1999 and still on my wall today is anything to go by. I remember quite enjoying it that first time without loving it, appreciating the reality/virtuality thing, and on principle liking the existentialist ponderings (though even at the time they struck me as worn a bit on the film's figurative sleeve) but feeling somewhat let down by the ending (and being terrified by Willem Dafoe's Gas). On this viewing, the film stands up as a neat package, the flatness of the visual style struck me more clearly (a flatness which is entirely apt to the settings), and the ending seems less like a cheat (after all, it had to end in something like the vein that it does, one way or another), but eXistenZ is still somehow on the insubstantial side and not as satisfying as it might have been.