A mentally disturbed man takes residence in a halfway house. His mind gradually slips back into the realm created by his illness, where he replays a key part of his childhood.
A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.
After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims who use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.
After developing an addiction to the substance he uses to kill bugs, an exterminator accidentally kills his wife, and becomes involved in a secret government plot being orchestrated by giant bugs in a port town in North Africa.
Riding across Manhattan in a stretch limo in order to get a haircut, a 28-year-old billionaire asset manager's day devolves into an odyssey with a cast of characters that start to tear his world apart.
Director:
David Cronenberg
Stars:
Robert Pattinson,
Juliette Binoche,
Sarah Gadon
When he acquires a different kind of show for his station, a sleazy cable-TV programmer begins to see his life and the future of media spin out of control in a terrifying new reality.
The residents of a suburban high-rise apartment building are being infected by a strain of parasites that turn them into mindless, sex-crazed fiends out to infect others by the slightest sexual contact.
A young woman develops a taste for human blood after undergoing experimental plastic surgery, and her victims turn into rabid, blood-thirsty zombies who proceed to infect others, which turns into a city-wide epidemic.
Dennis Clegg is in his thirties and lives in a halfway house for the mentally ill in London. Dennis, nicknamed "Spider" by his mother has been institutionalized with acute schizophrenia for some 20 years. He has never truly recovered, however, and as the story progresses we vicariously experience his increasingly fragile grip on reality.Written by
Erwin van Moll <max404@hotmail.com>
Having seen many of David Cronenberg's films, such as Scanners and The Fly, I was expecting Spider to be filled with fantastical, gory images. It is not. Instead, the film consists of things commonly seen. The twist is that everything in the film is seen through the eyes of Ralph Fiennes, a schizophrenic who has been released to a half way house after spending decades in an institution. Rather than being a gross out horror film, Spider is a devastating look at what it really means to be schizophrenic.
I admire this film. It is a slow moving film which will put some people off. But considering the subject matter - Fiennes has been released into a world that is a total mystery to him - the film follows his pace as he slowly makes his way around.
I can't tell too much of the plot without ruining the movie. Suffice to say that the film unveils Fiennes' childhood and his relationship with his parents and at the end we understand what he has been through. The way in which the story is told, in which the film is edited, is so clever and so dead on that it is perfect. Fiennes' past and present are interwoven to reveal what has happened to him and to mirror what the life of a schizophrenic would be like. Fiennes mumbles through much of the film and looks down at the ground. Still, he is one of the world's greatest actors and his performance is tremendous.
All the actors are top notch. Miranda Richardson and Gabriel Byrne play his parents. Lynn Redgrave runs the halfway house and John Neville is on of the patients.
This film is serious look at the life of a schizophrenic, without Hollywood clichés. It might leave you sad but with a better understanding of this devastating illness.
RECOMMENDATION: Yes, but it is serious, slow and sad film.
ACTING: Top notch from everyone
SCRIPT: Excellent
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Having seen many of David Cronenberg's films, such as Scanners and The Fly, I was expecting Spider to be filled with fantastical, gory images. It is not. Instead, the film consists of things commonly seen. The twist is that everything in the film is seen through the eyes of Ralph Fiennes, a schizophrenic who has been released to a half way house after spending decades in an institution. Rather than being a gross out horror film, Spider is a devastating look at what it really means to be schizophrenic.
I admire this film. It is a slow moving film which will put some people off. But considering the subject matter - Fiennes has been released into a world that is a total mystery to him - the film follows his pace as he slowly makes his way around.
I can't tell too much of the plot without ruining the movie. Suffice to say that the film unveils Fiennes' childhood and his relationship with his parents and at the end we understand what he has been through. The way in which the story is told, in which the film is edited, is so clever and so dead on that it is perfect. Fiennes' past and present are interwoven to reveal what has happened to him and to mirror what the life of a schizophrenic would be like. Fiennes mumbles through much of the film and looks down at the ground. Still, he is one of the world's greatest actors and his performance is tremendous.
All the actors are top notch. Miranda Richardson and Gabriel Byrne play his parents. Lynn Redgrave runs the halfway house and John Neville is on of the patients.
This film is serious look at the life of a schizophrenic, without Hollywood clichés. It might leave you sad but with a better understanding of this devastating illness.
RECOMMENDATION: Yes, but it is serious, slow and sad film.
ACTING: Top notch from everyone
SCRIPT: Excellent