Movie Review: A History of Violence

If you look closely enough at David Cronenberg’s films, you’ll find that they’re all— every dad-blamed one of them, from the head-exploding yucks of his 1981 breakthrough film Scanners to his 2002 Ralph Fiennes mumble-fest Spider— exquisitely dry comedies. Filtered through the prism of his work, Cronenberg has morphed from pigeonholed horror director to cult bio-horror madman to respected indie auteur. Critics bow and scrape before him and examine his films the way a pagan priest examines the entrails of a goat, searching for signs and portents as they try to divine the Truth behind his art. But what they’re not doing is laughing— and they should be, because Cronenberg’s is the most consistently brilliant body of comic work out there.

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