Antiviral

For those who fret that Canadian filmmaking legend David Cronenberg left his "body horror" phase behind long ago, rest assured that Davids' son Brandon keeps that tradition alive here. Caleb Landry Jones stars in this slightly futuristic tale (written by Brandon as well) as Syd March, an employee for the Lucas company. Lucas has built a thriving business selling viruses to devoted fans eager to experience the same things as their idols. Pretty "sick", huh? Syd also smuggles the viruses out of the lab, using his own body, to later sell them to pirates. His trouble arises when he carries the disease recently acquired by starlet Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon); it ends up killing her, and he must find out how to avoid the same fate, while becoming a hot commodity in his hideous line of work.

Some horror fans are sure to get a kick out of this. Although it's too quiet and too slowly paced for some tastes, anybody who's ever complained that a film wasn't gory enough won't be quick to gripe watching this one. Brandon does stay true to his dark and nasty mandate, delivering an ultra-creepy tale that really gets under the skin. (Most of the shots of needles penetrating skin are for real, so maybe avoid this one if you can't stand stuff like that.) The premise is preposterous enough to make for a good satire about the nature of celebrity worship. There's even a subplot about butchers making cuts of meat taken from the cells of celebrities. If nothing else, Brandon is always good at going for the gross-out.

He employs a striking visual aesthetic, as there are lots of stark white backgrounds, and not much variety in terms of colours - excepting, of course, usage of the red stuff.

Jones is an intense actor with a bright future; he definitely reminds this viewer of a young Brad Dourif. The supporting cast includes a number of familiar Canadian faces. Among them is Nicholas Campbell, who'd actually worked with Brandon's dad a few times, as Syds' boss. Malcolm McDowell does "special guest star" / "token name actor" duty, and does a typically solid job.

Brandon hasn't done another feature-length movie for a while now, but perhaps he has been waiting for inspiration to strike. If his next film is anything like this one, it will also be something to remember.

Seven out of 10.

Long live the new flesh! The new flesh here being David Cronenberg's son Brandon, who seems to have inherited his father's body-horror fixation and has used it to direct his feature-length debut Antiviral, an unnerving yet very entertaining piece of science fiction.

Antiviral offers a disturbing new meaning to our culture of celebrity obsession. Televisions everywhere show round-the-clock footage of their lives and newspapers are full of the tiniest stories and scandals. But that's just the beginning. Syd Marsh (Caleb Landry Jones) works for a company that specialises in injecting members of the public with diseases that have been taken from specific celebrities; you could be walking around with Madonna's chest cold if you wanted to. Part of Syd's job is to 'copyright' these infections: to remove all possibilities of contagion so that once they're injected they cannot be passed on. His desire to make a bit of extra money on the side however, coupled with his own addictions, leads him to be injected with a disease so incurable, it becomes a matter of life and death.

More a criticism of celebrity culture than an accurate vision of the future, there are moments in this film that are frankly alarming, even when compared to our present day society of Big Brother, X-Factor and Heat magazine, a world in which attaining celebrity status is the only worthwhile ambition. In Antiviral, for instance, there are companies that have developed 'cell stakes', slabs of grey meat grown from the muscle cells of the rich and famous that people actually queue up to buy and subsequently eat for lunch, their excuse being that it makes them feel closer to those they admire. It's moments like these that make it a hard concept to imagine, yet it's a credit to Cronenberg's direction, his cold, very clinical approach to every scene, that makes it somehow believable.

What makes Antiviral worth watching though, is Caleb Landry Jones, whose on-screen presence is beyond sinister. You might recognise him from X Men: First Class, The Last Exorcism and a couple of Breaking Bad episodes, but Antiviral is very much his breakthrough role; he won't be forgotten in a hurry. Very pale, very freckled and with a ponytail of ginger hair, he has this contemptuous expression on his face as if trying to keep from shouting at every client who comes into his office, yet each line of dialogue is considered and slow, sometimes menacing and other times devoid of any emotion at all, and he has such a mesmerising way of walking through doors that it becomes hard to take your eyes off him. Yet Jones' talent really comes into effect as the virus starts to take control of his body, developing a contorted, demonic stagger as he attempts to go about his life as though nothing is wrong.

Now it wouldn't be right to compare the films of father and son. There are certainly elements that share similarities: the hospital settings of Dead Ringers, the exploration of media and addiction in Videodrome, but Antiviral needs to be viewed as a completely separate piece of cinema, one that is refreshingly unique in its approach to a topic dealt with many times before, portraying a not-so-distant future with a strange, yet very absorbing bleakness. It's a well-directed film with an extraordinary performance at its centre that serves as a perfect showcase for the brilliance of both Brandon Cronenberg and Caleb Landry Jones; let's hope their collaborations continue.

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Syd March works for a cosmetic company that sells you a way to share the viruses and diseases your favourite celebrities have. It's a very intimate experience knowing you have been infected with herpes by the same blood of your celebrity crush. Syd is also involved in dealing with the black market over these samples of viruses and finds himself in over his head when his celebrity crush dies.

This is not a comedy. This is a gritty, blood-gushing, stomach-churning, grotesque sci-fi thriller from Brandon Cronenberg. However exciting that above sentence may have sounded, Antiviral is a slower-paced horror art piece. It is hard on the eyes and stomach, as such a story should be.

This is the film all of the original David Cronenberg fans have been waiting for. It's come a decade too late and not through him but through his son. Unlike Sofia Coppola or Jennifer Lynch, Brandon Cronenberg doesn't seem to be trying to find his own voice. With this film, he seems content filling the shoes his father had left unfilled over the last decade, making more audience-friendly dramatic thrillers. Antiviral very much could be a lost 2003 film David Cronenberg shot right after Spider. Like father like son.

Is Cronenberg finally back to the body-horror genre? Yep, in a re-birth through his son, Brandon. What David hasn't done in the last 10 years is done here by Brandon. Dad's influence is obvious from the very first shot up to the last shot of the film. I found connections, clues, winks and homages to David's old films throughout the entire movie - I'm not sure whether they were intentional or just my intuition, but I recalled Videodrome, Shivers, The Fly, eXistenZ, Naked Lunch and Crash. If you were missing the old Cronenberg style, you're gonna love this movie.

The script is very original and contains some interesting ideas. The lead actor does a pretty decent job in his role; I wouldn't go as far as saying it's Oscar material, but it's good enough for this part. The production design is pretty good and interesting, although minimalist. So is the cinematography, which is "minimalist" in the sense of being static (or close to that) almost the entire film, with very few exceptions here and there; I guess it worked okay for the film, yet it was enough for me to be distracted by it more than once - I myself would have preferred to see a more dynamic camera-work.

The movie is not perfect. It gave me the feeling of "something is missing here" at times - including in its ending - but all in all it was pretty impressive as a first feature-film for Brandon, both as a writer and a director (although if I compare it to Duncan Jones' Moon, the latter wins big time). I'll definitely look forward to his next film - much more than to David's next film, sadly.

Antiviral is a sci-fi/horror film from the mind of Brandon Cronenberg, David Cronenberg's son. This is a beautifully shot film, with a great premise but it just didn't click with me totally. The film follows Syd March, a man who works for a company that harvests diseases from celebrities and then injects them into paying clients. Sounds pretty messed up right? To put it in real world context, you'd go to this company and willfully get injected with Britney Spears cold sore. It gets even weirder when they get into celebrity cell regeneration that is made into steaks. Yeah, you read that right. There's a "butcher shop" that specializes in growing celebrities cells and selling them to you so you can eat them. This is an incredibly original story that plays on societies star obsessed culture and turns it on its ear. I love the idea of this movie but it moves at too slow of a pace. There's a few minor twists and basically no action, which makes a slow film feel even slower. Antiviral is not a fun film (no humor,no action, no scares) and is definitely not for everyone. It is a beautifully shot film, even though it is meandering, it is always great to look at. Every shot is framed well and done with purpose. The use of white gives it a very clean and sanitary look that is extremely effective. Cronenberg gets an A+ for the look of this film, it really is that nice to look at. The limited amount of gore is also expertly done, I just wish there had been more of it.

Caleb Landry Jones (Banshee in X-Men First Class) is the star, this is basically a restrictive narrative, and he is in pretty much every scene. He does a good job and has a bright future. Malcolm McDowell also has an extended cameo and he's as good as always. He seems to have settled into this role as a name actor, lending that name to help a small picture.

Antiviral is an incredibly original story, and beautiful to watch but it is just a tad dull. Instead of an A its a solid B, just because of the story and visuals. I repeat it is not for everyone, it reminds of Excision a bit (just without the snappy humor), so if you liked that movie then check out Antiviral. Brandon Cronenberg is the future of horror, and as a horror fan, I couldn't be happier.