(Photo by New Line, 20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection)
Over the course of six decades, David Cronenberg has built a bloody, slimed-over, and warped throne of flesh and bone to sit upon as the king of body horror. His first two films, Stereo and Crimes of the Future, are little-seen, ready for Cronenberg fans to re-discover and find that his obsession with pushing the boundaries of science, sexual perversity, and our oh-so-tenuous grasp on our physical self was present from the beginning.
Rabid and The Brood made more of a squeamish splash with general audiences. And in the ’80s, Cronenberg came into his own: Scanners was all over horror magazines for its legendary exploding head sequence. The Dead Zone contributed to a hot streak of Stephen King adaptations happening across the industry, following Carrie and The Shining. The Fly was the rare excellent remake and had the good sense to parade Jeff Goldblum around in his underwear (and vomit). And Videodrome seemed to best express Cronenberg’s vision of how the self can be utterly compromised by sinister forces.
The ’90s saw Cronenberg experimenting with an expanded dramatic palette (M. Butterfly, Naked Lunch) with varied results, which would pay dividends in the following decade. That’s when he released A History of Violence, which would become his highest-grossing movie, be nominated for two Oscars, and mark the start of a fruitful collaboration with Viggo Mortensen. The actor was nominated for the Oscar in their follow-up Eastern Promises, which boasts a bath house fight that’ll please those who think the tighty-whities Goldblum wore in The Fly were too much clothing. The third Viggo movie was A Dangerous Method, a kinky yet classy flick of psychology that brought in Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender.
And you know how Robert Pattinson is your new favorite actor, especially after you had written him off for those Twilight movies? You can thank Cronenberg for giving Pattinson the opportunity to do weird roles to shake up his image, in movies like Cosmopolis and Maps to the Stars. Cronenberg had appeared to have retired in recent years with the shifting movie and media landscape, but in 2022 he returned with Crimes of the Future, another body-horror shocker unrelated to his early film of the same name. If that’s the case, then it’s been an impressive, influential, and gross – really, really gross – career, which we’re celebrating now with all 21 David Cronenberg movies ranked – Certified Fresh films first! —Alex Vo
#1
Critics Consensus: David Cronenberg combines his trademark affinity for gore and horror with strongly developed characters, making The Fly a surprisingly affecting tragedy.
#2
Critics Consensus: The Dead Zone combines taut direction from David Cronenberg and and a rich performance from Christopher Walken to create one of the strongest Stephen King adaptations.
#3
Critics Consensus: David Cronenberg triumphs again, showcasing the Viggo Mortensen’s onscreen prowess in a daring performance. Bearing the trademarks of psychological drama and gritty violence, Eastern Promises is a very compelling crime story.
#4
Critics Consensus: A History of Violence raises compelling and thoughtful questions about the nature of violence, while representing a return to form for director David Cronenberg in one of his more uncharacteristic pieces.
#5
Critics Consensus: Dead Ringers serves up a double dose of Jeremy Irons in service of a devilishly unsettling concept and commandingly creepy work from director David Cronenberg.
#6
Critics Consensus: Ralph Fiennes is brilliant in this accomplished and haunting David Cronenberg film.
#7
Critics Consensus: Visually audacious, disorienting, and just plain weird, Videodrome‘s musings on technology, entertainment, and politics still feel fresh today.
#8
Critics Consensus: Quintessential if not classic Cronenberg, Crimes of the Future finds the director revisiting familiar themes with typically unsettling flair.
#9
Critics Consensus: A provocative historical fiction about the early days of psychoanalysis, A Dangerous Method is buoyed by terrific performances by Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, and Viggo Mortensen.
#10
Critics Consensus: Gooey, slimy, grotesque fun.
#11
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#12
Critics Consensus: Shivers uses elementally effective basic ingredients to brilliant effect – and lays the profoundly unsettling foundation for director David Cronenberg’s career to follow.
#13
Critics Consensus: Its gruesome scares may nauseate more than thrill, but Rabid bites into its story with distinct sophistication and thought-provoking themes.
#14
Critics Consensus: Strange, maddening, and at times incomprehensible, Naked Lunch is nonetheless an engrossing experience.
#15
Critics Consensus: Ruminating on the love within loss, The Shrouds is a personal and peculiar examination of grief by director David Cronenberg.
#16
Critics Consensus: Scanners is a dark sci-fi story with special effects that’ll make your head explode.
#17
Critics Consensus: Though some may find it cold and didactic, Cosmopolis benefits from David Cronenberg’s precise direction, resulting in a psychologically complex adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel.
#18
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#19
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#20
Critics Consensus: Despite the surprisingly distant, clinical direction, Crash‘s explicit premise and sex is classic Cronenberg territory.
#21
Critics Consensus: Narratively unwieldy and tonally jumbled, Maps to the Stars still has enough bite to satisfy David Cronenberg fans in need of a coolly acidic fix.
#22
Critics Consensus: David Cronenberg reins in his provocative sensibility and handles delicate material with restraint, yielding a disappointing adaptation that flattens M. Butterfly into a tedious soap opera.
