New On Netflix: eXistenZ

David Cronenberg‘s uneven but not uninteresting companion piece to Videodrome has Jennifer Jason Leigh (all stoned and sexy) as a brilliant designer of virtual reality video games who’s suddenly marked for death by a realist underground, which puts her and her marketing trainee (Jude Law) on the run in both the real world and in the world of her new game, “eXistenZ.” Takes place in a near-future in which organic “game pods” that connect right into your spinal cord have replaced boring mechanical things like PS3’s and Wii’s; Cronenberg’s fascination with fleshy, gooey stuff is at full-throttle here, with imagery that both recalls and surpasses some of the more unsettling sights in both Naked Lunch and Crash. eXistenZ is filled with good (and sometimes startling) ideas but runs out of steam in the third act, which features a twist ending that kind of renders the whole thing pointless. Still, you’ll find stuff in here that you won’t find anywhere else, so take a look — if you’ve got the stomach (and head) for it.

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