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Antiviral
| Released |
8 February 2013 |
| Director |
Brandon Cronenberg |
Starring
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Caleb Landry Jones, Sarah Gadon, Malcolm McDowell, Douglas Smith, Joe Pingue, Nicholas Campbell |
| Writer(s) |
Brandon Cronenberg |
| Producer(s) |
Niv Fichman |
| Origin |
Canada, United States |
| Running Time |
108 minutes |
| Genre |
Horror, sci-fi, thriller |
| Rating |
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Clinical.
David Cronenberg hasn’t made one of his trademark body horror “flesh” films in over a decade, but it appears his son Brandon has taken up the torch, and the rotten fruit hasn’t fallen too far from the tree. His ambitious debut Antiviral stems from David Cronenberg’s best early work, but the execution feels as vacuous as his father’s most recent output (see the vapid and claustrophobic Cosmopolis). With the central theme concerning the commodification of celebrity disease, Brandon seems to have inherited his pop’s penchant for body horror and messed up plots. Cronenberg Sr might have conceived this idea in the eighties at the height of celebrity obsession.
Some time has passed and celebrity culture has reached saturation point, to the degree that celebs now rule over us as demi-gods, concerning every aspect of daily life. Rabid fans even pay top dollar to inject themselves with the diseases their idols contract, in a bid to become closer to the superstars they worship. At the centre of all this is Syd March (Landry Jones), a technician for one of the head disease distributors. Syd alters each individually harvested virus in order to patent it, but he also provides illegal samples to piracy groups, using his own body as a vessel to smuggle them out of the clinic. When he contracts the deadly disease that kills megastar and Taylor Swift lookalike Hannah Geist (Gadon) in mysterious circumstances, Syd becomes a target for collectors and black market disease dealers. And so, he must uncover the mystery of her death before he suffers the same fate, while at the same time trying not to be consumed by the culture he’s disseminating.
While the idea of a whole generation of teenage girls slowly turning into Justin Bieber is more than worthy of a horror film, the plot is daft in places; a back alley butcher cultivates cell farms to make edible steak out of celebrity DNA. Mmm, delicious borderline cannibalism. However, there are some lovely moments of grotesquery and an abundance of vomited blood on clinic white surfaces.
Lead man Caleb Landry Jones comes from the Steve Buscemi school of acting. With his pockmarked body and pallid skin, he’s always interesting to look at, though his character never actually evokes any sympathy. Malcolm McDowell also throws down a nice bit part, as the callous Geist family physician, Dr. Abendroth.
Although Antiviral contains some intriguing ideas and viscerally impressive visuals, as a whole, the film is never entirely cohesive. Brandon Cronenberg may have a bright future ahead of him, but there’s just not enough to engage with beneath Antiviral’s cold surface. Still, it’s good to have a Cronenberg making skin flicks again.
- Cathal Prendergast |
