Flesh, guns, conspiracy, twisted romance, and strange bodily insertions. No, it’s not Monica’s Story but eXistenZ, the latest film by Canada’s own master of the grotesque, David Cronenberg. A low-tech, high-concept sci-fi thriller, eXistenZ marks Cronenberg’s return to his favoured turf of hallucination, video games, and what can happen if you take science a bit too far. It sounds like it would make a great comic book, and in fact it does in the graphic novel version, which is complemented by the fantastic, noirish illustrations of Sean Scoffield. Even if the wacko plot frustrates the literal-minded reader, Scoffield’s world of shadowed faces (everybody looks like they carry a flashlight to hold under their chins) provides its own gothic delights. The novel is preceded by a glossary of technical terms unique to the film – both handy and deadpan amusing in itself.