Herald rating: ***
Running time: 97 mins
In stores: now
Review: Ewan McDonald
Allegra (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is the world's leading designer of virtual reality games. Her new game is called eXistenZ, run through a "bioport" which plugs directly into the spine and connects to the game's control pod via an "umbrycord." You
play it with "MetaFlesh game pods," a combination joystick, touch pad and kidney. When you're hooked up, you can't tell the game from reality.
The game is marketed by Antenna Research and when a demonstration goes wrong and Allegra is almost killed, marketing trainee Ted (Jude Law) helps her escape. From here the pair apparently travel into the game and meet its characters, like a wacky chef (Willem Dafoe), and out of it to face down rival game-firm owner Kiri Vinoku (Ian Holm). From spooky Canadian director David Cronenberg, one that'll appeal to computer game players.
