4. David Cronenberg
Shivers
Rabid
The Brood
Scanners
Videodrome
The Dead Zone
Nightbreed
Naked Lunch
A History Of Violence
Eastern Promises
Perverse... sick... brilliant. David Cronenberg has brought a certain uncanny sensibility that has not yet been matched or even defined. With his earlier work invading our minds and screens from the North in the mid 1970's, Americans were exposed his Canadian take on horror. He first toyed with the body snatcher invasion in Shivers to the zombie like epidemic with Rabid (which is very much like Romero's The Crazies), to the fears of killer children in The Brood. Each film his journey as a director gives us a new and terrifying take on a sub genre of horror that we now see almost forgotten and miss-used. While films like Scanners and The Dead Zone looked inward at the complexity of the mind and the power within; Videodrome, Dead Ringers, and The Fly looked outward at the complexity of sex and relationships. Lately Cronenberg has moved out of the horror genre and into drama focusing on the importance and hardship of family. First A History Of Violence follows a man who attempts to keep his family safe after an act of heroism puts him in the public eye and then Eastern Promises that lets us into the dark secrets of a Russian Mob family both of which received Oscar nominations. It is a man of his intellect and exploration as a filmmaker that will give the audience experiences they have always wished for but were to afraid to ask.
