David CronenbergFilmography

The Matarese Circle

Crew: Director

Actors: Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise

Synopsis: Two spies on either side of their respective warring nations team up to take down an international criminal group called the Matarese in this MGM adaptation of Robert Ludlum's novel. Denzel Washington and Tom Cruise star in the Relativity Media co-production, directed by David Cronenberg from a Read More

Eastern Promises

Crew: Director

Actors: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Sinéad Cusack

Synopsis: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, and Vincent Cassel star in this David Cronenberg's thriller concerning a London midwife who unwittingly stumbles into a clandestine Russian sex trafficking ring. An unidentified Russian teen has been rushed to a London hospital after going into Read More

To Each His Own Cinema

Crew: Director

Synopsis: At the time of its production, To Each His Own Cinema represented the latest arrival in a tidal wave of internationally oriented omnibus films, with no official relation between them but all produced within a few years of one another. Few could claim a roster of talent comparable to this one Read More

A History of Violence

Crew: Director

Actors: Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ashton Holmes, William Hurt, Stephen McHattie

Synopsis: David Cronenberg directed this screen adaptation of a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke which explores how an act of heroism unexpectedly changes a man's life. Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) lives a quiet life in a small Indiana town, running the local diner with his wife, Edie (Maria Bello Read More

Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus

Actors: Hany Abu-Assad, Pedro Almodóvar, Vicente Aranda, Bruno Barde, Xavier Beauvois

Spider

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Bradley Hall, Lynn Redgrave, John Neville

Synopsis: Ralph Fiennes plays a grown man haunted by his childhood in David Cronenberg's stylized psychological drama Spider. Upon his release from a mental institution, Spider (Fiennes) takes up residence in a halfway house. Paranoid, quiet, and forever making notes, Spider spends much of the film Read More

Alias: Conscious

Alias: Remnants

Jason X

Actors: Kane Hodder, Lexa Doig, Lisa Ryder, Chuck Campbell, Jonathan Potts, Peter Mensah

Synopsis: Popular bogeymen Jason Voorhees terrorizes a group of nubile astronauts five centuries into the future in this sci-fi update of the Friday the 13th franchise. Early in the 21st century, Jason (actor/stunt man Kane Hoddar, filling the role for a fourth time) is experimented upon by army technocrats Read More

Masters of Horror

The American Nightmare

Actors: George A. Romero, John Carpenter, Tom Savini, David Cronenberg, Wes Craven

Synopsis: In the late '60s, the tone of American horror films began to shift in the wake of the startling success of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead -- horror films became gorier, bleaker, and began to subtly reflect the political and social upheaval gripping the country. Through the '70s and Read More

Last Night

Actors: Don McKellar, Sandra Oh, Callum Keith Rennie, Sarah Polley, David Cronenberg

Synopsis: Don McKellar wrote and directed this comedy-drama about the last night of the world, part of the 12-film Arte series of movies about the Millennium. Set in Toronto, Patrick (McKellar) endures a faux Christmas celebration with his family while Sandra (Sandra Oh) tries to get across town to commit Read More

I'm Losing You

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Rosanna Arquette, Amanda Donohoe, Buck Henry, Salome Jens, Frank Langella

Synopsis: This 1998 film about a dysfunctional Los Angeles family is directed by Bruce Wagner, on whose novel this is based. Everyone in this family has a problem. Perry (Frank Langella) is a successful TV producer who has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer just before his 60th birthday. His son Bertie (Andrew McCarthy Read More

eXistenZ

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Willem Dafoe, Ian Holm, Don McKellar

Synopsis: Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, who has long been fascinated by the ways new technology shapes and manipulates the human beings who believe they are its masters, is in familiar territory with eXistenZ, a futuristic thriller which combines elements of science fiction, horror and Read More

Crash

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, Deborah Kara Unger, Rosanna Arquette

Synopsis: After surviving a brutal car wreck, commercial director James Ballard finds himself slowly drawn to a mysterious subculture of people who have transformed automobile accidents into erotic events. Like the J.G. Ballard novel that inspired it, David Cronenberg's study of the sexual dimension of Read More

Blood & Donuts

Actors: Gordon Currie, Justin Louis, Helene Clarkson, Fiona Reid, Frank Moore

Synopsis: This Canadian production stars Gordon Currie as a charming but awkward vampire who is awakened from a decades-long nap by a runaway golf ball and eventually tries to readjust to life in the '90s with the help of a nutty, philosophical cab driver (Justin Louis) and the lovely proprietor of an Read More

To Die For

Actors: Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck, Illeana Douglas, Alison Folland

Synopsis: The price of fame is murder -- or at least it is in the mind of one woman in New Hampshire. Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman) has spent most of her life wanting to be famous; she's attractive, speaks well, and imagines herself to be intelligent ("imagines" is the key word here), so she has set her Read More

Trial by Jury

Actors: Joanne Whalley, Armand Assante, Gabriel Byrne, William Hurt, Kathleen Quinlan

Synopsis: Joanne Whalley-Kilmer stars as a woman corrupted by the criminal justice system in this courtroom suspense thriller. She plays a civil servant named Valerie Alston, a single mother living in New York City, who gets placed on a jury trying the case of mob boss Rusty Pirone (Armand Assante). A Read More

Henry & Verlin

Actors: Gary Farmer, Keegan Macintosh, Nancy Beatty, Robert Joy, Joan Orenstein, Margot Kidder

Synopsis: The deep bond formed between a troubled nephew and his simple uncle, whose character is reminiscent of Lenny from Of Mice and Men, is the focus of this Canadian melodrama set during the Depression in rural Ontario. Nine-year old Verlin will not talk, or cannot talk. His concerned and Read More

M. Butterfly

Crew: Director

Actors: Jeremy Irons, John Lone, Ian Richardson, Annabel Leventon, Shizuko Hoshi

Synopsis: David Cronenberg's cinematic intensity eviscerates this adaptation of David Henry Hwang's passionate stage production. Based on a true incident involving a French diplomat who carried on an affair for 18 years with a man the diplomat thought was a woman, M. Butterfly begins in 1964 Beijing when Read More

Blue

Synopsis: Canadian actor/screenwriter Don McKellar first cut his teeth as a director with this ironic short film, starring friend and frequent collaborator David Cronenberg. Not to be confused with either Derek Jarman's or Krzysztof Kieslowski's film of the same name, the 22-minute Blue intersperses scenes Read More

Naked Lunch

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, Roy Scheider

Synopsis: This cinematic/literary hybrid fuses motifs from Beat writer William S. Burroughs's novel of the same name with elements of the author's biography and plenty of the cerebral alienation and biomorphic special effects fans of creepy cult director David Cronenberg have come to expect. Bill Lee (Peter Read More

Nightbreed

Actors: Craig Sheffer, Anne Bobby, David Cronenberg, Charles Haid, Hugh Quarshie, Hugh Ross

Synopsis: Multimedia horror maven Clive Barker followed the success of his feature directorial debut Hellraiser with this equally surreal effort, based on his novella Cabal. The story involves the plight of Aaron Boone Craig Sheffer, a young man tormented by visions of monstrous, graveyard-dwelling Read More

Dead Ringers

Crew: Co-producer, Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jeremy Irons, Geneviève Bujold, Heidi von Palleske, Barbara Gordon, Shirley Douglas

Synopsis: Two twin brothers, both renowned gynecologists, descend into madness after becoming romantically involved with the same woman in this disturbing, horrific drama. Jeremy Irons delivers a bravura performance as both Beverly and Elliot Mantle, Toronto-based surgeons who operate an exclusive Read More

The Fly

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz, Joy Boushel, Les Carlson

Synopsis: Considered fairly gruesome in its day, the original 1958 The Fly looks like Mister Rogers' Neighborhood compared to this 1986 remake. Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis star as Seth Brundle, a self-involved research scientist, and Veronica Quaife, a science-magazine reporter. Inviting Veronica to his Read More

Into the Night

Actors: Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Pfeiffer, Richard Farnsworth, Irene Papas, Kathryn Harrold

Synopsis: Filled with enough cameos to keep film buffs entertained, this otherwise routine action-comedy by John Landis boasts Michelle Pfeiffer as one of its major attractions. She plays Diana, a woman prone to having affairs with some very dangerous men, and Jeff Goldblum is Ed Okin, an aerospace engineer Read More

The Dead Zone

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom, Anthony Zerbe

Synopsis: Christopher Walken plays a schoolteacher, Johnny Smith, who awakens from a five-year coma. He discovers that he has acquired the ability to foretell a person's future simply by touching his or her hand. After seeing several examples, Smith's doctor (Herbert Lom) becomes convinced that Smith can Read More

Videodrome

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: James Woods, Sonja Smits, Deborah Harry, Peter Dvorsky, Les Carlson

Synopsis: Hardcore pornography, sadomasochism, mind control, and living televisions all play crucial roles in Videodrome, one of director David Cronenberg's explorations of dangerous sexuality and technological obsession. The morally questionable hero of the tale is one Max Renn (James Woods), a television Read More

Scanners

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Stephen Lack, Jennifer O'Neill, Patrick McGoohan, Lawrence Z. Dane, Chuck Shamata, Michael Ironside

Synopsis: The title of this David Cronenberg sci-fi horror film refers to a group of people who have telekinetic powers that allow them to read minds and give them the ability to make other people's heads explode. The children of a group of women who took an experimental tranquilizer during their Read More

The Brood

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar, Art Hindle, Cindy Hinds, Henry Beckman

Synopsis: Canadian director David Cronenberg followed his graphic vampire variation Rabid with this multi-layered, speculative horror film which addresses the way the repressed demons of the psyche can force their way to the surface. Psychologist Dr. Raglan (Oliver Reed), director of the controversial Read More

Fast Company

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: William Smith, John Saxon, Claudia Jennings, Nicholas Campbell, Don Francks

Synopsis: Amidst such formative shockers as Shivers, Rabid and The Brood, writer/director David Cronenberg dashed off this semi-documentary. Fast Company relates the life story of race car champion Lonnie Johnson. The ubiquitous William Smith, veteran of many a low-budget cycle flick, is quite convincing as Read More

Rabid

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Marilyn Chambers, Frank Moore, Joe Silver, Howard Ryshpan, Patricia Gage

Synopsis: For his second commercial feature, following a pair of experimental films and 1977's Shivers, Canadian horror auteur David Cronenberg continued to mine the themes of disease and mutation that were already becoming his perennial concerns. Marilyn Chambers stars as Rose, an attractive young woman Read More

Shivers

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Paul Hampton, Joe Silver, Alan Migicovsky, Lynn Lowry, Susan Petrie, Barbara Steele

Synopsis: A gripping exercise in body horror and social paranoia, prolific Canadian director David Cronenberg's debut feature offers a startling look at modern isolationist society with a parasitic twist. When a scientist experimenting with a new form of organ transplants kills a young female resident of a Read More

Stereo

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Editor, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Jack Messinger, Iain Ewing, Clara Mayer, Paul Mulholland

Synopsis: The first film by director David Cronenberg, the black and white, hour-long feature Stereo is more self-consciously avant-garde, and less visceral, than his later work. Nevertheless, many of the usual Cronenberg concerns are present: a futuristic setting, bizarre scientific experimentation, and an Read More

Crimes of the Future

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Editor, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Ronald Mlodzik, Paul Mulholland, Jack Messinger

Synopsis: Fans of innovative Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg will recognize the emergence of a his unique voice in this 1970 project, the director's second feature (following the 1969 Stereo). The bizarre premise introduces a dystopian future society in the wake of a devastating epidemic -- which killed Read More