Synopsis

Game designer Allegra Geller survives an assassination attempt while demonstrating her newest virtual reality creation, eXistenZ. Fearing that the organic game pod containing the only copy has been damaged, she escapes with marketing trainee Ted Pikul. As they enter increasingly unstable layers of simulated reality, the pair struggle to distinguish programmed behavior from genuine identity, while enemies and allies become impossible to identify with certainty.

Factoids & Trivia

• The initial idea came from a 1995 interview with Salman Rushdie. Cronenberg was struck by the notion of an artist being targeted because of something he had created, before expanding the concept into a story about a game designer.

• eXistenZ was Cronenberg's first original screenplay since Videodrome (1983). The screenplay began as a more direct story about an artist living under threat, but changed after he became interested in showing the game itself.

• The film's game technology is deliberately organic rather than sleek or electronic. Its game pods and bio-ports reflect Cronenberg's recurring interest in the body merging with technology.

• Jennifer Jason Leigh reportedly kept one of the prop game pods between filming sessions to help develop the maternal connection between Allegra and her creation.

• The film premiered at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival in 1999, where Cronenberg received the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution.

• Its release in 1999 invited comparisons with The Matrix, another science fiction film centered on uncertain reality. While The Matrix presents virtual reality through digital systems, eXistenZ makes the experience tactile, biological, and deliberately unsettling.

• The title's unusual capitalization is often associated with the Hungarian word "isten," meaning "god," formed by the letters between the opening capital X and closing capital Z.