Writer/Director: David Cronenberg ("The Fly", "Crash") Producer: Robert Lantos, Andras Hamori, David Cronenberg Director of Photography: Peter Suschitzky Visual and Special Effects Supervisor: Jim Isaac Jennifer Jason Leigh - Allegra Gellar Jude Law - Ted Pikul Willem Defoe - Gas Ian Holm - Kiri Vinokur Sarah Polley - Merle

From the very beginning you are not sure whether the characters are in a futuristic game which transports them into a world controlled by their minds or whether they are back in real time in real life.

In this sci-fi thriller, Cronenberg doesn't rely on flashy special effects to take the audience into the future game's world: He simply has a well-written script with lots of effective twists and great performances.

Jennifer Jason Leigh is Allegra Galler - games goddess, the creator of eXistenZ and a bevy of other wacky games. Jude Law is her rescuer, Ted Pikul, a nerdy trainee marketing executive for the company that produces her games. Willem Defoe, one of my favourite actors, has a bit part as a sinister guy called Gas within the game.

To play eXistenZ you must have a bio-port, an entry point on your lower back connecting the spinal cord and nervous system with the conductor that leads from the game pod. The pod is a PlayStation-like devise made up of amphibian innards all jelly like and alienesque.

There are moments of sexual tension in the film when Allegra and Pikul plug into each other's bioports.

The film weaves its way in and out of scary stages of reality and fantasy and ends with a twist continuing the mind menacing theme to the bitter end. "eXistenZ" is great fun. But not the kind of game I would want to play late at night at Timezone.

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