Antiviral

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.

Brandon Cronenberg's auspicious debut feature is a visually stunning, compelling science fiction story that asks the question, "How far would you go to own a piece of your celebrity crush?" Directing from his own script, the young Canadian takes a decidedly cynical view of the cult of personality in this sci-fi paradigm shift -- "Antiviral" isn't necessarily showing us what will be in the future but what could be now as it appears to be set more in the present day.

The film opens in a pristine medical facility where a desperate young man, Edward Porris (Douglas Smith in a too-brief but important establishing role), is about to be injected with a live virus taken from his favorite superstar. Being bedridden with the same illness infecting the woman of his desire is the ultimate autograph. The shot is administered by Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones), a strictly professional, unemotional clinician who knows not to take his job home with him. Of course, everything is not as it seems and March becomes embroiled in a mystery that pulls in the viewer like a syringe drawing blood.

The cast is focused on a small handful of characters. 22-year-old Caleb Landry Jones (Sean Cassidy/Banshee of "X-Men: First Class") is in virtually every shot, undergoing a total physical and emotional transformation that's almost painful to watch, reminiscent of the award-winning performance turned in by Tom Hanks in "Philadelphia." His masterful characterization of Syd's downward spiral is breathtaking and central to the picture's potency. The iconic Malcolm McDowell is satisfyingly engaging as Dr. Abendroth, in a role that stands proudly with anything he's done. As Hannah Geist, the gorgeous object of men's desires, Sarah Gadon is a heartbreaker. Naive diva one minute, vulnerable victim the next, Gadon provides much of the heart and soul of "Antiviral" in a film otherwise devoid of color, literally. Joe Pingue and Nicholas Campbell are notable in support.

"Antiviral's" narrative is curiously fascinating, to be sure, but this is a film to examine more on the surface the way an old-fashioned family doctor can tell what ails you by looking at your skin. The highly stylized production is best appreciated by those enriched by a leisurely walk through an art museum. Every frame is like a painting, with lush cinematography and score that can only be effective when director, DP, composer, editor, and the entire visual team work in lockstep, resulting in a brilliant vision executed with highly disciplined precision.

Much of March's day is set in the clinic and his home, which mirrors his workplace in its cold sterility. The color palette is nothing but black and white. Lighting is oversaturated with characters bathed in bright white, giving the outward appearance of good health that belies the reality of what literally lurks beneath the skin. The outside world is like a parallel universe, where dirt and grime cover a worn out, used landscape as if diseased itself.

Cinematographer Karim Hussain ("Hobo with a Shotgun," one of my 2011 Sundance Film Festival Top 4) goes against the hand-held trend with stationary camera throughout much of the movie. These tripod shots often feature perfectly centered props and sets following the rule of 3s -- left, center, and right objects perfectly balanced with the action in the middle of the field of view. Many frame-within-a-frame shots continue this classic visual style as the viewer peers through doors and windows, with straight lines and rectangular shapes filling the screen. It's a refreshing break with tradition although, ironically, it's a look established long ago in sci-fi classics like Fritz Lang's "Metropolis." Much is owed to editor Matthew Hannam for the patient pace of the picture. E.C. Woodley's haunting electronica score is filled with biologically-inspired rhythms that reflect the throbbing hearts and mechanical drone of a scientific setting.

Viewers are cautioned not to underestimate the profound importance of the camera-work and visual effects. The look of "Antiviral" is as much, or more, responsible for the film's impact than the script, a notion which may be lost on those simply trying to figure out the plot and following the dialogue. This is a feast for the eyes and ears, not just the mind.

Brandon Cronenberg proves himself a welcome and worthy addition to the cinematic stage with "Antiviral," a delicious visual showcase and emotionally satisfying, albeit scathing look at one of the perils of modern society.

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.

Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) works for Lucas Clinic which buys viruses from celebrities to be injected into obsessed fans who are willing to pay. They have exclusive rights to celebrity Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon) which is very popular. Then he harvests and injects the Geist sample into himself. Others like celebrity butcher Arvid replicates celebrity cells and sells them as meat. Hannah Geist dies and Syd starts to get sicker.

This is a great idea for an original indie. The script needs a few more passes to elevate the tension and add some thrills. The idea seems to be all there is in this movie. It's not particularly exciting. It also needs a section at the beginning to do an exposition on what the products are about, the science behind it and the legal ramifications. Brandon Cronenberg should have made a fake TV ad for the product. It's also probably important to bring in the law early to explain the legal world these products exist in. I love the machine that he gets hooked up to. It's definitely has the Cronenberg style. However the movie lacks any energy. It's creepy but not much more than that. I like the weird creepiness. I'm just waiting for Brandon to take it to the next level.

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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