BONUS EPISODE: CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (2022)

Note: from Oct 2021-June 2022, the podcast was known as 21 Jump Scare and was organized in a slightly different fashion, with different awards.

Background (spoiler-free) 0:00-18:15
Discussion (spoiler-heavy) 18:16-53:10
Awards (spoilers for days) 53:11

Director David Conenberg
Screenplay David Cronenberg
Featuring Tanaya Beatty, Welket Bungué, Denise Capezza, Lihi Kornowski, Nadia Litz, Don McKellar, Viggo Mortensen, Sozos Satiris, Lea Seydoux, Scott Speedman, Kristen Stewart

Opened: June 3, 2022
Budget: $35 million
Gross, USA/Canada: $2,452,882
Gross, Worldwide: $4,516,858

SPOILER-FREE SYNOPSIS

Time: Not too far into the future. Setting: Unclear, but it looks a lot like Greece. A boy, Brecken, is seen munching the edge of a plastic wastebasket after being warned by his mother not to eat anything out of the ocean. Apparently fed up with a kid who eats plastic, Brecken’s mother Djuna smothers him with a pillow. Cut to the home, or the lair, of Saul Tenser, a performance artist who sleeps in who appears to be an oversized seed pod and whose body is growing new, unheard-of organs. Saul’s partner and art and life, Caprice, is sufficiently impressed with his new organs and arranges a show in which she performs surgery on him in front of an adoring audience. Apparently, in this society, pain is no longer exists, so surgery has become something of a hobby for many, and can be seen taking place in public. Soon Saul and Caprice are approached by Wippet and Timlin, bureaucrats from a government agency that allegedly registers new organs; a detective named Cope who’s on the trail of rogue doctors; and finally, Brecken’s father, Lang, who manufactures candy bars that seem to be made of plastic, and may or may not be responsible for his son’s digestive mutation.

EPISODE NOTES

Music from the “COTF” soundtrack by Howard Shore.

TRAILER

AWARDS

The Tom Six Award for Most Disturbing Scene
Bradford: The autopsy of Brecken
Eric: The autopsy of Brecken

The Seth Brundle Award for Most Likable Character
Bradford: Caprice
Eric: Wippet

The Ellen Ripley Award for Character that Most Deserved to Live
Bradford: Brecken
Eric: Brecken

The John Doe Award for Character that Most Deserved to Die (and Does)
Bradford: Djuna Dotrice
Eric: [Abstaining]

The Gaspar Noe Award/Ken Russell Award for Most Gratuitous Screen Moment
Bradford: Berst and Dani get naked and climb into the Sark machine together
Eric: (tie) Berst and Dani get naked and climb into the Sark machine together; Berst and Dani kill Lang by taking a drill to the back of his head