For more than 50 years now, David Cronenberg has wowed audiences with one film after another. His approach to how he tells a story is a method turned to by the next generation of filmmakers. He’s 80 years old, with no real sign of slowing down. He recently wrapped production on his most recent film, The Shrouds. He had a hit film last year with Crimes of the Future. His children are artists as well. His daughter Caitlin is a photographer and filmmaker, Cassandra is a painter, writer, and filmmaker, and Brandon is a filmmaker with recent hits The Infinity Pool and Possessor. It’s clear that artistry and creativity run in the family.
He’s been labeled the king of body horror. Injecting his style into science fiction, crime dramas, horror, and Stephen King adaptations. His work has received critical acclaim that has gone as far as Academy Award nominations. And then there are other films of his that are extraordinary cult classics. With all those acolytes, here’s what Rotten Tomatoes thinks of some of Cronenberg’s best films, with a ranking based on their scores.
12 Rabid (1977) – 79%
Rabid became a film that most people either revisited or stumbled upon for the first time while they sat at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. It fits the bill for the perfect film to watch during a time like that. Rabid follows a woman played by Marilyn Chambers who is recovering from surgery after a motorcycle accident. She grows a blood-sucking appendage in her arm that makes her thirst for human blood.
Most of Cronenberg’s work has some sort of social commentary or even a personal touch to something he is dealing with. Rabid is just 90 minutes of fun gore effects and a nicely paced horror film. It’s one of his few films where you can just kick back and have fun while watching it. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 79%.
11 Crimes Of The Future (2022) – 80%
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In his most recent work, Cronenberg revisits a film of the same title that he made early in his career, Crimes of the Future. This time around, he utilizes some of the styles and themes that made him who he is today. Knowing that a man in his late 70s is behind the camera on a film like this is remarkable. He doesn’t miss a step in directing themes about how technology impacts the environment.
And what that also does to humans living in a society like that. There are a lot of ideas that don’t stick the landing in Crimes of the Future. But it sure is good to see Viggo Mortensen under the direction of David Cronenberg again.
10 The Brood (1979) – 80%)
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We’ve seen horror films where kids kill adults before, but the murderous children of The Brood haunt you more. The film is one of a few Cronenberg movies that a casual fan of his work has probably seen. The 1979 thriller stars Samantha Eggar, Art Hindle, and Oliver Reed and has an 80% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
In it, Hindle is a man trying to uncover the strange techniques of a psychologist on his institutionalized wife. All the while this is happening, a series of brutal murders that are linked to the therapist are going on. The Brood is also a personal film for Cronenberg, who wrote it fresh off a difficult divorce. It’s a bold movie with some terrifying-looking kids in it.
9 Videodrome (1983) – 80%
James Woods plays a television producer at a trashy TV station, where he learns of a show called Videodrome. The show is loaded with murder, torture, and many other kinds of crude content. He seeks it out and airs it on the channel. However, the show begins to pollute his brain, and he begins to be infected by what he has seen. Cronenberg really tapped into what was prevalent in the early 1980s, with cable television on the rise and many people being exposed to things through a new medium.
The body horror is so grotesque, and yet you can’t look away because it’s oddly a thing of beauty. “Long live the new flesh!”
8 Spider (2002) – 85%
Coming in at 85% on Rotten Tomatoes is the 2002 film, Spider. Staring Ralph Fiennes as a character named Dennis “Spider” Cleg, who lives in a halfway house after being institutionalized for being mentally ill. He retreats back into his mind to a memory that may be real, or it may not. Fiennes is excellent as a person with schizophrenia.
The film has been criticized for feeling too run-of-the-mill for a David Cronenberg film, but there are haunting set pieces and great supporting performances played by Gabriel Byrne and Miranda Richardson.
7 Dead Ringers (1988) – 85%
Also coming in at 85% on Rotten Tomatoes is the film Dead Ringers. More recently, Amazon rebooted the story, starring Rachel Weisz, into a television series. But the original 1988 film stars Jeremy Irons in dual roles as a confident gynecologist who has affairs with most of his patients. His brother, Beverly, the other doctor at the practice (also played by Irons), has more of an insecure personality.
The two inevitably descend into madness as they share a romance with a struggling actress played by Genevieve Bujold. Cronenberg goes above and beyond to invest the audience in the destructive dysfunction the twins have. There have been a lot of actors who have played twins in the past, but Jeremy Irons is remarkable at delivering polar opposite performances with the personalities between the brothers.
6 Shivers (1975) – 85%
Shivers is a low-budget 1975 zombie film that is early in Cronenberg’s career. On paper, the film sounds like B-movie heaven, but his directing style elevates it to another level. It’s one of the best low-budget horror films of the 1970s. The disease in Shivers is an STD-like slug that infects the people of an apartment building. It’s a different kind of zombie film that is loaded with gore, sex, and grotesque body horror that will make you gag. Shivers was definitely a film that kicked off what we would see in the decade to come with his films.
5 A History of Violence (2005) – 87%
Adapted from the graphic novel of the same name and holding a score of 87%, A History of Violence is a change of pace in plot for Cronenberg. Co-written by Josh Olsen, the film tells the story of Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), a man who kills two criminals who attempt to rob a small town diner. The news coverage that Tom gets attracts the attention of Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), who believes Tom is a mobster who went missing years prior. And soon, Tom and his family will have to face the truth of his violent past. If this landed in the lap of a director just looking for a job, the film would be a generic take on the ‘family man with a past’ subgenre.
Cronenberg explores themes of existential crisis within a family. The violence of the film leaves a bad taste in your mouth, but never feels run-of-the-mill or exploitative. And the overarching theme is conveyed quite well: suppressing who we are only makes things worse.
4 The Dead Zone (1983) – 88%
David Cronenberg’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel receives an 88% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The Dead Zone follows Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken), who gets into a car accident and wakes up years later from a coma with psychic abilities after touching someone. When he shakes the hand of a politician, Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen), he sees danger and harm to innocent people as a result of his campaign, thus setting Johnny out to stop the crooked politician.
One of the best Stephen King adaptations, as well as one of the best Walken performances ever. His crazy eyes and sunken look vibrate on screen.
3 Fast Company (1979) – 89%
Fast Company has a high ranking on this list due to its high Rotten Tomato score. Yet, it doesn’t fit in with much of the rest of Cronenberg’s filmography. He would later direct films like Crash and Cosmopolis that had more of his artistic stamp on them. But all in all, Fast Company is a fun late-’70s B-movie car flick. The film stars two standout actors of genre films from that era, John Saxon and William Smith. The film is about a race car driver whose sponsor replaces him with the driver’s archrival, thus creating drama and some car theft, as well as the shelved driver going rogue.
2 Eastern Promises (2007) – 89%
You could pair Eastern Promises with A History of Violence as a double feature. Both star Viggo Mortensen and came out back-to-back. Mortensen plays a Russian gangster named Nikolai who is connected to a dangerous crime family. He soon encounters Anna (Naomi Watts), who holds incriminating evidence against the family Nikolai works for. The situation then sets off a string of violent acts of retribution. Cronenberg and screenwriter Steven Knight explore the grim world of sex trafficking in Europe.
The film has many standout scenes. One is the film’s opening gruesome barber shop scene, and the other is Mortensen baring all in a fight sequence with Chechen hitmen. The performance would earn Mortensen an Oscar nod that year.
1 The Fly (1986) – 93%
It’s the highest on the list due to its score, but it’s also maybe Croneneberg’s most popular film he’s ever made. The Fly stars Jeff Goldblum as a scientist named Seth Brundle who successfully achieves teleportation. On one attempt, a housefly happens to fly into the pod with him on accident, and thus merging the cells of human and insect to create one of the most grizzly-looking make-up effects of all time. Gena Davis plays Goldblum’s girlfriend and a journalist who covers the scientific accomplishment but now has to sit back and watch the one she loves transform into a horrific-looking, bottom-feeding creature.
The Fly is a remake of the 1958 film of the same name. Although it keeps the premise true to the original, it elevates the themes to another level. It’s a provocative film with gore and paranoia, but it’s also a heartbreaking film to watch. There are themes that hit hard for any viewer with a heartbeat. The Fly is mostly about the sadness of watching a loved one die, either from old age or disease. With this film releasing in the 1980s, you can’t help but think about the AIDS virus and if Cronenberg was trying to say something about it. In closing, the saddest thing about The Fly is really simple: something horrible can happen to a good person.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
