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Celebrity
worship descends into madness in Brandon Cronenberg’s feature debut, Antiviral, where we are introduced to a
world where--among other things--fans achieve “biological communion” with their
idols by paying to be infected with viruses harvested from their famous bodies
(for which the “celebrity hosts” are in turn paid by establishments like The
Lucas Clinic).
“Mr. Lucas, how do you respond to critics
who say the disease you’re really selling is a cultural one?”
--Talk Show Host
Antiviral (some of whose roots lie in the award-winning 2008 short film, Broken Tulips) is an astoundingly self-assured debut by
Cronenberg, who possibly knows a thing or two about celebrity, being the son of
David Cronenberg.
Like Jennifer
Lynch, Brandon Cronenberg is the talented offspring of a noted writer/director
who has gone on to follow in Father’s footsteps, and old school body horror
Cronenberg can most definitely be seen in Antiviral.
There are also shades
of Videodrome here, as a
not-really-sympathetic protagonist gets sucked into shadowy and potentially
lethal maneuverings.
“I’m afraid you’ve become involved in
something sinister.”
--Dr. Abendroth
Caleb Landry
Jones (who may be familiar from Daniel Stamm’s The Last Exorcism and Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class) brings just the right level of pale, sickly
creepiness to the role of Lucas Clinic Technician Syd March, the aforementioned
not-really-sympathetic protagonist, whose dealings with celebrity host Hannah
Geist (Sarah Gadon, who also appears in the elder Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method and Cosmopolis, as well as Mary Harron’s The Moth Diaries) trigger the dire
situations he finds himself in over the course of Antiviral’s running time.
We’ve also got
the exquisite Malcolm McDowell here as Geist’s personal physician, Dr.
Abendroth, as well as some other Cronenbergs in the film’s crew (Brandon’s
aunt, Denise Cronenberg, and his sister, Caitlin).
The range of [viral] offerings [from The
Lucas Clinic] spans common skin infections and colds, to our more intense and
lengthy experiences with communicable and rare forms of acute disease.
This is powerful stuff (some may very well say
revolting and repellent), as Cronenberg runs his cinematic scalpel deep into
society’s celebrity obsessions and how our very own fixations and fascinations
make us complicit in the widespread sickness that riddles the body cultural.
And yes, like
old school David Cronenberg, this is transformative and transgressive cinema,
so you have been duly warned.
“Celebrity is not an accomplishment. Not
at all. It’s more like a collaboration that we choose to take part in.
Celebrities are not people. They’re group hallucinations.”
--Dorian Lucas
(Antiviral OS courtesy of impawards.com.)
