Crimes of the Future director-writer David Cronenberg has been predicting Cannes Film Festival walkouts as a kind of taunt. He’s basically asking cineastes if they have the necessary sand. Are you men or milquetoasts? How deep is your ocean? How long is your toleration fuse?

Viewers who bolt out of a Crimes screening, in short, might be frail, anxious, overly self-protecting. The first requirement of a devotional cineaste is an absolute willingness to submit, of course, and if you can’t endure a little psychic disturbance by way of simulated body horror, what good are you?

Fuck all that. In the name of all the tepid souls and conventional comfort-seekers of the movie realm I am ready to whine and howl and kvetch over Crimes of the Future. Deep down I have always been a ponce, a nancy boy. I go to movies to feel more alive and self-aware and connected to the universe, and I’ve never gotten how depictions of body mutilation are in any way edifying or nutritious.

Sitting through scenes of body horror and mutilation over the years, “real” or imagined…Cronenberg’s Videodrome, The Brood, Crash, Dead Ringers and The Fly, not to mention Stuart Gordon’s Re–Animator and Alex Garland’s Never Let Me Go…yes, these scenes have enhanced or enriched or added dimension to my moviegoing life. At the very least I’m glad I’ve seen them.

But did I enjoy watching them during the actual moment of exposure? Nope — I winced through each wincing moment, and I haven’t re-watched any of these except Re–Animator, mainly because of the humor. The only Cronenberg film I’ve watched several times is The Dead Zone.

Cronenberg himself has claimed that his films are “funny,” but only in a dry, perverse, no-laugh-funny sense.

Will I be man enough to handle the grisly stuff in Crimes of the Future? I may be, but I know right now I’ll be groaning.