By now, a gala screening of the latest David Cronenberg movie at the Toronto International Film Festival is par for the course. Where his new film, A History of Violence, breaks with tradition lies in the fact that, this time, TIFF audiences won’t be weirded out.

No, the thriller, produced by Hollywood’s Benderspink for New Line Cinema, contains no fantastical gynelogical tools, no talking typewriters, no erotic car crashes and no cyber-world landscapes. History, written by Josh Olson from a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, is set in an all-too-real town called Millbrook, IN. (Much of it was shot in the actual town of Millbrook, ON.)

The story follows Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen, who starred in New Line’s Lord of the Rings franchise), the popular owner of a local diner, his loving wife Edie (Maria Bello from Assault on Precinct 13) and their awkward but intelligent son Jack (newcomer Ashton Holmes). As the film opens, the peace in Millbrook is about to be disturbed by a couple of thugs on a homicidal spree. Their next target is Tom’s place, but in Tom they get more than they bargained for. With the threat resolved, that would seem to be the end of it, but the incident sets off a chain of unexpected events that threaten the Stall family’s very survival.

Rounding out the cast are Hollywood vets Ed Harris and William Hurt, who make brief but effective appearances as menacing heavies.

Although the film is set in a far more recognizable world than one usually gets from Cronenberg’s fertile imagination, that is not to say it will not shake up viewers the way the director’s work tends to. It will no doubt get audiences talking about scenes including a rough sexual encounter on a staircase, and arguing as to whether its acts of violence are morally justified – once they have calmed down from the movie’s sheer intensity. Although there is a surface-level familiarity to the film – you could call it a modern western – it pushes the envelope with its graphic sex and violence, which could either help or hinder its chances at the box office.

But based on the reaction to History’s violence at the Cannes Film Festival and at a test screening in Pasadena, CA, Cronenberg feels that he has satisfied both his commercial and artistic urges.

‘I found that audiences are exhilarated by [the violence], then they’re repelled by it, because it’s structured that way and that’s the way it’s supposed to be,’ Cronenberg tells Playback. ‘They’re complicit in the violence. They applaud it – literally… Even when it’s an act of violence that’s as justifiable as any that you could construct, there are nasty, disturbing and [far-reaching] consequences. It leaves the audience mumbling to themselves, and that’s what you want. That’s what I want.’

While Cronenberg is usually optimistic about his films’ commercial chances, he hasn’t made a film that has exceeded US$3 million at the North American box office since Dead Ringers in 1988 (which took in US$8 million, according to Variety). Although History comes with all the trappings of a genre thriller, and despite strong reviews out of Cannes, its edginess and moral ambiguity could prove problematic in luring the ever-crucial but traditionally conservative U.S. audience.

‘Amy Taubin, who writes for The Village Voice, thinks that this is completely not a commercial movie and not a mainstream movie at all, and she’ll be shocked if it’s a big success,’ the director notes with a laugh. ‘So I don’t know, frankly. I can only go by the very few audiences that I’ve sat with, and the response has been terrific – and complex.’

History gave the director his biggest budget to date, its US$32-million price tag nearly doubling the costs of M. Butterfly (1993) and eXistenZ (1999). And it is also the upper end of what New Line tends to spend – the blockbuster Lord of the Rings films excepted. Cronenberg says that if the film made US$30 million domestically, New Line would be happy. That would put History”s take halfway between his two biggest successes to date, also released through U.S. studios: 1984’s Stephen King adaptation The Dead Zone (US$20 million) and the 1986 horror remake The Fly (US$40 million). If response to the new film were to be tepid in the U.S., it could recoup much of its costs in the European market, where Cronenberg is highly revered. For example, eXistenZ made nearly as much in the U.K. as it did in North America (US$2.7 million and US$2.9 million, respectively).

History opens in theaters one week after TIFF, on Sept. 23. It will have a platform release in major centers in both Canada (through Alliance Atlantis) and the U.S. before opening wide on Sept. 30. The day after the film screens at the festival, Cronenberg, Mortensen and Bello are slated to head to New York to promote History to local media.

www.historyofviolence.com