Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Cast: Caleb Landry Jones, Sarah Gadon, Malcolm McDowell, Douglas Smith, Joe Pingue
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 103 minutes
With ANTIVIRAL, Brandon Cronenberg looks at society’s increasing obsession with celebrities and for the most part he does a good job.
Cronenberg obviously shares some aesthetic sensibilities with his father, David, and the body-horror looks like it could be taken straight out from one of his 1980s films. Needles tear through skin on a regular basis and blood spews out of infected characters like their insides have turned to mush. However if you are after something really gross, this film will probably disappoint you. Whilst there’s an abundance of unpleasant visuals, it never goes so far as to gross out for the sake of doing so. The cinematography is a treat with clinical white colours clashing brutally with harsh reds and blacks, and the visuals are the strongest point of the film. The story is a clever enough twist on modern society and it is anchored well by Caleb Landry Jones (X-MEN: FIRST CLASS) who gives a good performance in the lead.
The biggest issue with the film is that despite the fact that the film actually has something to say, the lasting effect of the film isn’t very strong. The story glides along and it works well, but it doesn’t feel very important either. You do want to figure out what exactly happened to Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon), but at the same time, there isn’t much of a sense of urgency from anyone involved. The pace is slow and methodical, bordering sometime on too slow, and the film do sometimes get dangerously close to stalling completely. While the film’s message is not exactly the most subtle in the world, the film luckily manages to avoid it becoming cloying by spicing it up with side themes such as copyright theft and corporate competition.
While it may be bordering on being a little self indulgent at times, ANTIVIRAL it still an interesting debut for the younger Cronenberg, and I’m sure that we will see much more of his work in the future. Until then, you can do much worse than having a look at this one.
ANTIVIRAL is out on DVD Monday 11th February
