The world of David Cronenberg is unmistakable. From the flesh-twisting mutations his characters inevitably undergo, to the chilly Canadian landscapes, plate glass, and concrete set amid snowy wilderness, this is a world that forces human beings to evolve away from stifling normality into new forms that may be terrifying but are also exciting.

Having directed slow-moving student art pictures ("Stereo", "Crimes of the Future"), which even he admits would be hard to sit through these days, Cronenberg turned in the mid-70s to the horror film. While others bloodied chain-saws or knifed teens, the calm Canadian stuck to visionary strangeness and came up with one-of-a-kind concepts: parasitic artificial organs that infect emotionless tenants with various types of sex mania ("Shivers"); a penile barb implanted in Marilyn Chambers' armpit by "the Colonel Sanders of plastic surgery" through which she sucks the blood of victims and spreads plague ("Rabid"); and dwarfish murderers in dayglo parkas ("The Brood").

Since the early 80s, when he made "Scanners" (battling telepaths and exploding heads) and "Videodrome" (literally mind-rotting cable television porno), Cronenberg has mostly adapted other people's works. A Stephen King chiller became "The Dead Zone", with Christopher Walken as a psychic drifting towards assassination to save the future from Martin Sheen; and a 50s schlock SF flick mutated into "The Fly", with Jeff Goldblum scrambling atoms and becoming "the first insect politician".

After the glacial, brilliant "Dead Ringers", with Jeremy Irons as twin gynaecologists going mad, Cronenberg worked with cult novels (William Burroughs' "Naked Lunch", J.G. Ballard's "Crash"). These are interesting films, and I've no doubt that his take on Patrick McGrath's "Spider" will be too, but I miss the old Cronenberg, who looked into his own imagination rather than channelled that of others.

Though I admire King, Burroughs, Ballard, and McGrath, they mean less to me as artists than the man behind "Shivers" and "Videodrome". So I welcomed the return to his own vision with the distinctive "eXistenZ", a "Matrix" for the intellect with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law lost in a VR gameworld assembling guns from fishbones.

Cronenberg is a rare film maker who can make you jump with a shock shot, but scare you more deeply when you think about it afterwards.

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