A lot of art house films run the stereotype of not really holding as much depth as people project onto them, and this is no different. Maybe there's more here, but it's a lot of conjecture. You're going to read into it what you want to, but in the end, you're the one putting in the effort. The truly great works in this genre give you more to hold onto and something substantive to take leaps from. This just feels like a lot of vague middling. Never too bold. Never too outrageous. But never really cutting either. There is some obvious commentary on the art world and the cult of celebrity. The ability to get lost in the pursuit of great things and to be misunderstood. But it's nothing as fresh as the material begs to express. It's superficial and there certainly isn't the payoff I was looking for. A lot of loose threads that distract, and a lot of wasted time meandering through pointless juxtapositioning. That said, there is something here. It's not a wasted effort, and it could even be that the commentary is to an extent on you having to put in the effort to get something out of the piece. But any artwork that has its head up it's ass so much that it compromises itself to make a statement doesn't deserve praise for delivering an underwhelming result..

For a philosophical and political cyberpunk film, it has some of the most inspired ideas and themes since eXistenZ and The Matrix, but it is structured and directed like a low-budget indie film and that really hurt its accessibility (and it's a pity because the message is really important). It felt like each character was a composite of 2-3 different characters' worth of ideas that didn't quite gel together. Maybe the script needed some trimming and polish, or maybe it would've worked better as a book than a film. As food for thought, it was spectacular. As entertainment, not so much.

OMG, I genuinely thought for the whole movie that Lang was played by The Boys' Antony Starr lol Starr and Scott Speedman could be twins!

What a huge let down. This is an insufferably boring, lifeless and insultingly pretentious dystopian horror. I love how they market this as something truly shocking that would inspire walk outs out when it's not. I recently watched Alex Garland's pretentious sci-fi miniseries and this film gives the exact same energy if we remove all the body horror elements. Nothing about this film is particularly compelling. The lack of tension makes it feel drab and lifeless rather than thrilling. Don’t get me wrong, it looks great, the score is bomb, it has that Cronenberg weirdness all over it, and it seems like there are some interesting themes of human evolution and adapting to an ever-changing environment, but it's all packaged in a way to make it as mediocre as possible. Not to mention the rather uninteresting supporting roles (largely filler), which makes the runtime periodically feels too long. There are some good wince-inducing body horror moments, at least.