David Cronenberg

Canadian director whose body of work features some of the most well-reviewed films in the history of Wittertainment - including A History Of Violence, Eastern Promises, and Crash (the David Cronenberg one) - a film Mark Kermode wanted to be seen by everyone in the country.

Much of Cronenberg's early work (Rabid, Scanners, The Fly) featured horrific things either attacking or morphing into people's bodies - hence the phrase "Cronenbergian body horror", used by Mark to describe Julia Ducournau’s debut feature Raw in April 2017. Teeth was another film that reminded Mark of these works, although Teeth is funnier.

When reviewing Angry Shrek, Mark explained that one of the film's problems is that the Cronenberg film The Brood - in which a woman gives birth to the children of her rage - was a real cinematic exploration of a physical manifestation of anger that a CGI Jolly Green Giant bouncing around just could not match.