It's certainly original (though based on an early 70s J.G. Ballard novel), but it's unpleasant and more concerned with sensationalism than in the characters. Shock-meister David Cronenberg seems to have made a career in trying to be controversial rather than entertaining, and this film is so overblown that there's practically nothing shocking about it save that a major studio actually would fund the money to make it. The acting is terrible, with everyone speaking in low, gutteral and almost inhuman tones, as if the cast were zombified and told to intone some babble. The liberal amount of sex scenes are quite unsexy, and in fact made me more nauseous than anything. I expect this kind of deviant softcore porn from Spader, who seems to be building a career on them, but Holly Hunter must have just finished smoking a crackpipe to have seen anything in this garbage to have made her want to be in it. Poor directing, unlikeable and unrealistic characters, unappealing sex scenes involving lesbianism, homosexuality and people kissing each others scars...an unpleasant experience from beginning to end.

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