The name of the game is eXistenZ, a system based on technology so advanced that it borders on biology. It's a quantum leap ahead of anything ever imagined possible.

The top executives from Antenna Research are all on hand for the testing of their new game, but what sends a buzz of excitement through the audience is the presence of the brains behind eXistenZ, the adored game goddess herself, Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who is hip, hyper-aware, sexually alluring, and utterly dedicated to her invention.

The air is crackling with anticipation in the small community hall where dozens of game devotees are gathered to experience this ultimate adventure that will forever shatter the line that separates wild and unpredictable fantasy from reality.

What brings such intense realism to eXistenZ is the fact that the game's driver, a pod that bears a resemblance to a living organ, plugs directly into it's player's nervous system via a bioport or spinal jack, which has been implanted into each of these fanatical gamers. Because the pod has access to the memories, anxieties and preoccupations of its players, the direction each game takes depends entirely on who's playing.

The moment finally arrives, and the eager players plug in for the ride of their lives, rocking and. swaying, lost in the dreamy world of the eagerly awaited innovation. Suddenly, they're jarred from their fantasy world by an anti-eXistenZialist protester wielding a strange weapon - an organic fusion of gristle and bone, capable of shooting its ammunition of human teeth at fatal velocity. Shouting "Death to eXistenZ! Death to the demoness Allegra Geller!" the man fires the weapon, severely damaging the game-pod.

In the pandemonium that ensues, Allegra is whisked away by Ted Pikul (Jude Law), a low-ranking Antenna Research employee who is serving as a security guard for the event. A chase follows, with the unlikely duo of Allegra and Pikul seeking shelter in a world where nothing is as it seems, and where the villains of the game become real. A world where the hunters pursue our heroes directly into eXistenZ, the game Allegra has invented.

Allegra is strangely at home here, but for Pikul, whose imagination doesn't extend beyond dreams of the boardroom, it's a landscape brimming with peril and danger. He's uneasy in this odd land as he struggles to keep himself and Allegra ahead of the assassins - out to cash in on the $5-million bounty that the Anti-eXistenZialists have put on the game genius' head.

Pikul finds eXistenZ breathtaking in its realism, as the pair is launched into an eerie and strange new setting. The action is swift and full of fiendishly clever effects and plot twists conceived in the imaginations of the players as the couple explores deeper realms of the game.

Finally, with the game threading its way through increasingly fantastic levels of intrigue, the forces of Anti-eXistenZialism close in on Pikul and Allegra.

MOVIE REVIEW

eXistenZ is a virtual reality game that plunges people in to a world of strangeness. And it is strange. The game characters react only when spoken to in certain context, the animals are weird, the guns are biological, and the plot is twisted.
Read our eXistenZ movie review »