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By the way - that’s a fantastic name for a company - and not just because it comes straight out of a Resident Evil game.

Anyway, the reason I brought up security is because a would-be assassin (Kris Lemche) infiltrates the event with a pistol made of bone that shoots - get this - human teeth. His attack is chronicled in what is without question one of the worst action sequences I’ve ever seen in any kind of movie ever in my life. Thank God this is not an action movie, or this would be the end of the article. Instead, what we establish is that a shadowy conspiracy, based entirely in the surrounding countryside, wants Allegra and her new game eliminated. If this had been a snide criticism of the gaming industry's inherent misogyny, this would also be the end of the article. Five stars. Two thumbs up. Well done.

No such luck. The story's inciting incident, and the dialogue involved with it, seems written, rehearsed and filmed by creatures who have never seen humans interact before. Everyone immediately pegs Allegra as the target of a vast conspiracy, whose icy tendrils reach into every nook and cranny of society. Antenna assigns an underling named Ted (Jude Law) to look after the wounded Allegra, who insists on eschewing traditional medical attention to go off the grid, Sarah Connor style. While driving around aimlessly for no reason, Allegra decides that the most important thing to do is not to go to the police, but for Ted to play eXistenZ with her. Apparently the only copy of a $38 million game is on her game pod, and it may have been damaged during the attack.

That’s mind-bendingly stupid for a hundred reasons, but this leads me to two things. One, it’s hard to feel any sympathy for a video game designer who walks around with the only existing copy of all their work in a fleshy pod under their arm. Second, did I say fleshy pod? Why, yes I did. Remember when I said eXistenZ takes place in an oddball facsimile of our world? Well here, Playstations are organic computers made from bits and parts of various animals, and therefore look like something pulled out of the dumpster behind an organ donation clinic.

And, instead of plugging into your television, they plug directly into a “bio-port” at the small of your back with an actual umbilical cord. This is something that has apparently swept the country, and there are very few people left who have not been willing to let a gas station attendant punch a hole in their spine so they can have a place to plug in their Xbox made out of raw pork. I’m going to come out and admit that I was so thrown off by this that it completely distracted me from anything and everything else eXistenZ was trying to do. I suppose if the film took place in some far flung futuristic world where getting penetrated by a slimy Lovecraftian horror was the only way to play Grand Theft Auto, I could accept this. But here it feels like a blatant anachronism, as wildly out of place as Abraham Lincoln with an iPad.

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