Wednesday, July 29, 2026 at 7:30 PM
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema - Downtown, Los Angeles
In the cinema of David Cronenberg, the body is typically weaponized, and EXISTENZ is no different. But in his 1999 virtual reality sci-fi film – coming in a year when cinema was seemingly obsessed with the topic thanks to THE MATRIX and THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR – he also manages to weaponize food. Cronenberg has a history of making sure that we don't look at certain things the same way again: headaches, arm wrestling, car crashes, and here, Chinese food. EXISTENZ features all of the things that we have come to admire about Cronenberg's work in genre cinema: sketchy protagonists, fetishization of the body, gross organic matter, wild conspiracies, and it just adds guns made out of bones to the mix. It also features Willem Dafoe as a character named Gas, if you need any other reason to plug in. (Justin LaLiberty)