18 Movies Directed by David Cronenberg

Shivers

Shivers

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1976-07-06

Languages:

English

Countries:

Canada

Runtime:

87 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

6.6 (11062 Reviews)

Genres:

HorrorSci-Fi

Fullplot:

A scientist living in an apartment complex kills a girl and uses acid to destroy her internal organs, and then kills himself. While investigating, a doctor discovers that the scientist was doing experiments on the use of genetically engineered parasites as organ transplants. Soon, other people in the complex begin showing signs of carrying the parasites, spreading the things through wanton orgiastic abandon, and the complex begins suffering an attrition problem.

Rabid

Rabid

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1977-04-08

Languages:

English

Countries:

Canada

Runtime:

91 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

6.4 (9417 Reviews)

Genres:

HorrorSci-Fi

Fullplot:

Rose is involved in a motorcycle accident, and has experimental surgery performed in order to save her life. However, she develops a taste for blood. Her victims grow in number as well as madness, turning the city into chaos.

The Brood

The Brood

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1979-05-25

Languages:

English

Countries:

Canada

Runtime:

92 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

6.9 (16156 Reviews)

Fullplot:

A man's wife is under the care of an eccentric and unconventional psychologist who uses innovative and theatrical techniques to breach the psychological blocks in his patients. When their daughter comes back from a visit with her mother and is covered with bruises and welts, the father attempts to bar his wife from seeing the daughter but faces resistance from the secretive psychologist. Meanwhile, the wife's mother and father are attacked by strangely deformed children, and the man begins to suspect a connection with the psychologist's methods.

Scanners

Scanners

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1981-01-14

Languages:

English

Countries:

Canada

Runtime:

103 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

6.8 (31928 Reviews)

Genres:

HorrorSci-Fi

Fullplot:

Darryl Revok is the most powerful of all the scanners, and is the head of the underground scanner movement for world domination. Scanners have great psychic power, strong enough to control minds; they can inflict enormous pain/damage on their victims. Doctor Paul Ruth finds a scanner that Revok hasn't, and converts him to their cause - to destroy the underground movement.

The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1983-10-21

Languages:

English, Russian

Countries:

USA

Runtime:

103 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

7.3 (41204 Reviews)

Cast:

Writer:

Jeffrey Boam (screenplay)

Stephen King (novel)

Fullplot:

Christopher Walken wakes from a coma due to a car accident, only to find he has lost five years of his life, and yet gained psychic powers. Foreseeing the future appears to be a 'gift' at first, but ends up causing problems...

Videodrome

Videodrome

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1983-02-04

Languages:

English

Countries:

Canada

Runtime:

87 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

7.3 (54277 Reviews)

Genres:

HorrorSci-Fi

Fullplot:

Max Renn runs a TV channel, and when looking for new material to show--he discovers "Videodrome." His girlfriend, Nicki Brand, goes to audition for the show, and Max gets drawn into the underlying plot that uses the show as its front for a global conspiracy.

The Fly

The Fly

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1986-08-15

Languages:

English

Countries:

USA, UK, Canada

Runtime:

96 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

7.5 (107153 Reviews)

Cast:

Writer:

George Langelaan (short story)

Charles Edward Pogue (screenplay)

David Cronenberg (screenplay)

Fullplot:

Seth Brundle, a brilliant but eccentric scientist attempts to woo investigative journalist Veronica Quaife by offering her a scoop on his latest research in the field of matter transportation, which against all the expectations of the scientific establishment have proved successful. Up to a point. Brundle thinks he has ironed out the last problem when he successfully transports a living creature, but when he attempts to teleport himself a fly enters one of the transmission booths, and Brundle finds he is a changed man. This Science-Gone-Mad film is the source of the quotable quote "Be afraid. Be very afraid."

Dead Ringers

Dead Ringers

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1988-09-23

Languages:

English

Countries:

Canada, USA

Runtime:

116 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

7.3 (26887 Reviews)

Cast:

Writer:

David Cronenberg

Norman Snider

Bari Wood (book)

Jack Geasland (book)

Fullplot:

The Mantle brothers are both doctors - both gynecologists - and identical twins. Mentally however, one of them is more confident than the other, and always manages to seduce the women he meets. When he's tired of his current partner, she is passed on to the other brother - without her knowing. Everything runs smoothly, until an actress visits their clinic, and the shy brother is the first to fall in love. Will they be able to 'share' her ?

Naked Lunch

Naked Lunch

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1992-04-24

Languages:

English, Arabic

Countries:

Canada, UK, Japan

Runtime:

115 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

7.1 (32691 Reviews)

Genres:

Drama

Cast:

Writer:

William S. Burroughs (novel)

David Cronenberg

Fullplot:

Not an adaptation of beat writer William S. Burrough's novel but a mix of biography and an interpretation of his drug- induced writing processes combined with elements of his work in this paranoid fantasy about Bill Lee, a writer who accidentally shoots his wife, whose typewriter transforms into a cockroach and who becomes involved in a mysterious plot in North African port called Interzone. Wonderfully bizarre, not unlike Burrough's books.

M. Butterfly

M. Butterfly

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1993-10-01

Languages:

English

Countries:

USA

Runtime:

101 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

6.8 (6370 Reviews)

Cast:

Writer:

David Henry Hwang (play)

David Henry Hwang (screenplay)

Fullplot:

During the Cultural Revolution in China in the mid-1960s, a French diplomat falls in love with a singer in the Beijing Opera. Interwoven with allusions to the Puccini opera "Madama Butterfly", a story of love and betrayal unfolds.

Crash

Crash

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1997-03-21

Languages:

English, Swedish

Countries:

Canada, UK

Runtime:

100 min

Rated:

NC-17

IMDB Ratings:

6.4 (39388 Reviews)

Genres:

Drama

Cast:

Writer:

J.G. Ballard (novel)

David Cronenberg

Fullplot:

Since a road accident left him with serious facial and bodily scarring, a former TV scientist has become obsessed by the marriage of motor-car technology with what he sees as the raw sexuality of car-crash victims. The scientist, along with a crash victim he has recently befriended, sets about performing a series of sexual acts in a variety of motor vehicles, either with other crash victims or with prostitutes whom they contort into the shape of trapped corpses. Ultimately, the scientist craves a suicidal union of blood, semen, and engine coolant, a union with which he becomes dangerously obsessed.

eXistenZ

eXistenZ

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1999-04-23

Languages:

English

Countries:

Canada, UK

Runtime:

97 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

6.8 (72693 Reviews)

Fullplot:

Allegra Geller, the leading game designer in the world, is testing her new virtual reality game, eXistenZ with a focus group. As they begin, she is attacked by a fanatic assassin employing a bizarre organic gun. She flees with a young marketing trainee, Ted Pikul, who is suddenly assigned as her bodyguard. Unfortunately, her pod, an organic gaming device that contains the only copy of the eXistenZ game program, is damaged. To inspect it, she talks Ted into accepting a gameport in his own body so he can play the game with her. The events leading up to this, and the resulting game lead the pair on a strange adventure where reality and their actions are impossible to determine from either their own or the game's perspective.

Spider

Spider

Basic Info:

Released Date:

2002-11-13

Languages:

English

Countries:

Canada, UK, France

Runtime:

98 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

6.9 (28488 Reviews)

Cast:

Writer:

Patrick McGrath (novel)

Patrick McGrath

Fullplot:

Dennis Clegg is in his thirties and lives in a halfway house for the mentally ill in London. Dennis, nicknamed "Spider" by his mother has been institutionalized with acute schizophrenia for some 20 years. He has never truly recovered, however, and as the story progresses we vicariously experience his increasingly fragile grip on reality.

A History of Violence

A History of Violence

Basic Info:

Released Date:

2005-09-30

Languages:

English

Countries:

USA, Germany, Canada

Runtime:

96 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

7.5 (175737 Reviews)

Cast:

Writer:

John Wagner (graphic novel)

Vince Locke (graphic novel)

Josh Olson (screenplay)

Fullplot:

This is the story of a mild-mannered man, named Tom Stall, who becomes a local hero through an act of violence, he lives a happy and quiet life with his lawyer wife and their two children in the small town of Millbrook, Indiana. But one night their idyllic existence is shattered when Tom foils a vicious attempted robbery in his diner. Sensing danger, he takes action and saves his customers and friends in the self-defense killings of two-sought-after criminals. Heralded as a hero, Tom's life is changed overnight, attracting a national media circus, which forces him into the spotlight. Uncomfortable with his newfound celebrity, Tom tries to return to the normalcy of his ordinary life only to be confronted by a mysterious and threatening man who arrives in town believing Tom is the man who wronged him in the past. As Tom and his family fight back against this case of mistaken identity and struggle to cope with their changed reality, they are forced to confront their relationships and the divisive issues which surface as a result.

Eastern Promises

Eastern Promises

Basic Info:

Released Date:

2007-09-21

Languages:

English, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu

Countries:

USA, UK, Canada

Runtime:

100 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

7.7 (179733 Reviews)

Fullplot:

In London, the Russian pregnant teenager Tatiana arrives bleeding in a hospital, and the doctors save her baby only. The Russian descendant midwife Anna Khitrova finds Tatiana's diary written in Russian language in her belongings and decided to find her family to deliver the baby, she brings the diary home and ask her uncle Stepan to translate the document. Stepan refuses, but Anna finds a card of a restaurant owned by the Russian Semyon inside the diary and she visits the old man trying to find a lead to contact Tatiana's family. When she mentions the existence of the diary, Semyon immediately offers to translate the document. However, Stepan translates part of the diary and Anna discovers that Semyon and his sick son Kirill had raped Tatiana when she was fourteen years old and forced her to work as prostitute in a brothel of their own. Further, Semyon is the dangerous boss of the Russian mafia "Vory v Zakone", jeopardizing the safety of Anna and her family. Meanwhile, Semyon's driver Nikolai Luzhin gets close to Kirill and Semyon, climbing positions in the criminal organization, but he helps Anna, her family and the baby.

Cosmopolis

Cosmopolis

Basic Info:

Released Date:

2012-05-25

Languages:

English

Countries:

Canada, France, Portugal, Italy

Runtime:

109 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

(35670 Reviews)

Cast:

Writer:

David Cronenberg (screenplay)

Don DeLillo (novel)

Fullplot:

On the spur of the moment, twenty-eight year old Manhattan self-made multi-billionaire Eric Packer decides he wants to get a haircut from his regular and longtime barber across town, a difficult journey today if only because of the traffic gridlock from three high profile but vastly different events taking place in the borough, including a wandering anarchist protest, they who largely use dead rats as their symbol of protest. Through his trek, Eric, most taking place in his stretch limousine, meets with several business associates - some with as esoteric job titles as Head of Theory - and personal acquaintances, including his several week bride, Elise, a wealthy woman in her own right with who he still has a somewhat distant relationship if only because they don't really know each other. The start of Eric's day ends much differently than the end as his personal fortune largely hinges on external forces in relation to a speculative currency transaction, and as he learns that someone is trying to kill him, who and for what reason he does not know.

A Dangerous Method

A Dangerous Method

Basic Info:

Released Date:

2011-11-10

Languages:

English

Countries:

UK, Germany, Canada, Switzerland

Runtime:

99 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

6.5 (74215 Reviews)

Cast:

Writer:

Christopher Hampton (screenplay)

Christopher Hampton (play)

John Kerr (book)

Fullplot:

Suffering from hysteria, Sabina Spielrein is hospitalized under the care of Dr. Carl Jung who has begun using Dr. Sigmund Freud's talking cure with some of his patients. Spielrain's psychological problems are deeply rooted in her childhood and violent father. She is highly intelligent however and hopes to be a doctor, eventually becoming a psychiatrist in her own right. The married Jung and Spielrein eventually become lovers. Jung and Freud develop an almost father-son relationship with Freud seeing the young Jung as his likely successor as the standard-bearer of his beliefs. A deep rift develops between them when Jung diverges from Freud's belief that while psychoanalysis can reveal the cause of psychological problems it cannot cure the patient.

Maps to the Stars

Maps to the Stars

Basic Info:

Released Date:

2015-02-27

Languages:

English

Countries:

Canada, Germany, France, USA

Runtime:

111 min

Rated:

R

IMDB Ratings:

6.3 (22399 Reviews)

Genres:

ComedyDrama

Cast:

Writer:

Bruce Wagner (screenplay)

Fullplot:

The Weiss family is the archetypical Hollywood dynasty: father Stafford is an analyst and coach, who has made a fortune with his self-help manuals; mother Cristina mostly looks after the career of their son Benjie, 13, a child star. One of Stafford's clients, Havana, is an actress who dreams of shooting a remake of the movie that made her mother, Clarice, a star in the 60s. Clarice is dead now and visions of her come to haunt Havana at night... Adding to the toxic mix, Benjie has just come off a rehab program he joined when he was 9 and his sister, Agatha, has recently been released from a sanatorium where she was treated for criminal pyromania and befriended a limo driver Jerome who is also an aspiring actor.

Become a Movie Insider

Join our mailing list and get access to expert analysis, trivia, and recommendations that will elevate your movie-watching experience.

View our privacy policy.