Rather than talk about the many, many sexual metaphors and images that pop up in Existenz, I'd like to talk about the film in terms of narrative, and its particular brand of alternate reality. This movie was certainly not helped by being released around the same time of the Matrix, since they cover somewhat similar ground, but Existenz is a quiet, low-budget, semi-incoherent techno-horror movie, and the Matrix is the Matrix. But, as alternate realities go, I think Existenz brings up a point that no other book or movie has yet about alternate reality: what if you can't tell which reality you're in?

Granted, the Matrix sort of brought up this idea, but it was made pretty clear once people started dodging bullets which was reality and which was manipulable simulation. In fact, Neuromancer and Snow Crash also carry this idea that the mark of the "real world" is a certain powerlessness to natural laws (e.g. gravity); Case diving through 3-dimensional space and Hiro writing code to define the Black Sun are how we know they are in virtual reality. So we come to Existenz, where entering virtual reality give you no superpowers, or really any major distinction between where you were pre- and post-bioport plugging (aside from a narrative shift, which I'll get to). In fact, (spoilers alert), it's not even made clear which, if any, parts of the movie take place in reality, so the audience isn't even given a stable starting point to try and trace the journey between the virtual and the real.

Cronenberg does seem to offer a brief glimmer of hope, though, in that the narrative of the film seems to devolve as the characters go "deeper" into the game. The story began with a fairly standard plotline--a failed assassination on Character A, who goes on the run with Character B, who doesn't want to get dragged into all of this. Willem Defoe's character is the first indication that this narrative may not be "naturally occurring" in the real world, but is a construction, since the coincidence that Allegra and Pikul would run into a gas station owner who has exactly what they need to advance the story line is a little too remarkable. As the story continues, they enter a game within a game, objects and characters pop up in the wrong "narrative level" (e.g. the tooth gun that was used to shoot Allegra in the first scene pops up again when they are supposedly in the game's Chinese Restaurant). The film ends with a "realist revolution", multiple character deaths, and no real explanation of what's going on. By constructing his film this way, Cronenberg has done with narrative what Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and the Matrix did with surpassing the laws of reality: demonstrated the split between real and virtual. But, the closing scene offers a comprehensive and total "gotcha!" to the audience who think they have finally figured out where the line is.

At first it seems like the "It was all a dream" cop-out, with everyone waking up from their Transcendenz headsets, sans spine-sphincters, laughing about how ridiculous that whole story about Existenz was. But, the closing line of the movie, and a couple of visual cues demonstrate that the game may be able to simulate nice, quiet reality just as effectively as the chaotic, excessive mess we've seen for the past hour and a half. Regardless of whether or not you think they're still in the game at the end of the movie, you still have to force yourself to believe one or the other, because both seem equally plausible. This is ultimately where Cronenberg uses virtual reality to properly pull out the rug, because we finally understand that the distinction between real and virtual will be truly invalid if the real can be perfectly simulated. The notion of "nested realities" becomes terrifying if they are indistinguishable, because there is no way of knowing which is genuine. Even if we think we've hit "File>Quit", or unplugged, or taken off the high-def goggles, there's no assurance that that too is not just another simulation. Or, to take another tack, if they're indistinguishable, does it matter if we're in the real world or not?