eXistenZ

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.

Cronenberg's virtual-reality body-horror gets a generally warm reception, with critics drawn to its deliberately unsettling organic aesthetic and gleefully strange logic. The sharpest disagreement centers on whether the film stands on its own or is overshadowed by The Matrix and Open Your Eyes, which arrived around the same time and tackled overlapping ideas with, some argued, greater clarity and ambition.