

A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.
Practical Effects
The organic game pod — Cronenberg's most disgusting baby.
Writing
Script written in two weeks, somehow smarter than most blockbusters.
Acting
Leigh and Law commit to the grotesque with unsettling sincerity.

Director
David Cronenberg
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Cronenberg wrote this after fleeing Universal's 'Frankenstein' remake — he called it his 'revenge' against studio interference. The two-week writing sprint was his personal middle finger to development hell.
Released March 1999, literally weeks before The Matrix — audiences dismissed it as a knockoff, missing that Cronenberg's visceral body-horror approach to VR was the grimy antithesis to Wachowski sleekness. History has been kinder.