Antiviral is the first feature from Brandon Cronenberg, who is following in his father’s footsteps with a film that features cannibalism, sexual abuse and rampant obsession. But it is the commentary on capitalism that ends up taking the majority of this film. Though filled with dread, unease and all-around grotesque at times, it lacks the punch of a compelling storyline to be memorable.
Antiviral stars Caleb Landry Jones, as Syd March, a quiet self-contained individual who looks sickly at the start before the madness even begins. Syd is an employee at the Lucas Clinic that sells celebrity viruses to madly fervent fans. He is a salesman, drawing them into the experience, feeding on their obsession to not only sell a product but an experience. Taking a bit of the cut, Syd smuggles out hardware and viruses to sell to piracy groups. However, when he takes a virus that seems to have killed a celebrity, he becomes a target of both the labs, piracy groups and rampant fans. Before the deadly virus can consume him, he must find out what happened, to save himself.
Many will probably watch Antiviral because of his father, David Cronenberg and you can definitely see his father’s influences throughout this. However, it ends up skimming the surface of macabre and madness and feels a bit too safe in its approach. White and red are the abundant colours that make up the landscape of this horror. Wherever Syd goes it is mostly white, almost like a blank canvas that someone has forgotten to paint.
Devoid of life, and passion is the tone of this Antiviral, and the character Syd is no exception to this. We find little out about Syd’s motivations throughout the film. Is he a fan that is on both sides of the selling corporation, or just a cog in a machine trying to get whatever he can out of the system? His apartment appears to have been barely lived in, apart from the lab apparatus in which he inputs all the viruses to break the encryption.
Syd, who sees this world through his eyes, has no thoughts or input to be had. This is where the film ends up letting itself down. The intrigue towards Syd and the underbelly of this corporate virus machine soon wears off, and you are wondering what really is the point of it. But perhaps that is the message, that corporations will always win, and the wheel keeps turning, but it is not a novel or new message and something that could have been less tediously achieved with a short rather than a feature film.
There is some action later in the film that is laced with hallucinations and dark sticky blood in most of the scenes. There are even hints of a world underneath the underworld, but we only see a glimmer of it. The world which though can be clinical, is too lifeless for the audience to sink its teeth into. Not much is given in how this virus empire has come to be, and the world is too contained, filled with two-dimensional characters, that there is no investment in the outcome for Syd or what is to come.
Visually, the white and blood that permeates every scene is also overdrawn, and even as a visual experience, it becomes tiresome to watch. There are only so many scenes of Syd and others, coughing up spit, blood and bile that you can stomach before it becomes mundane. Perhaps if this was a feature from an unknown director, but with the catalogue of his father to be compared against, Antiviral is longing for a creepiness factor that gets under your skin. It is a shame for such a premise that was ripe for the picking, that we get so little in reward.
Antiviral is an unsettling film that plays with themes of celebrity worship gone mad, but never really goes beyond playing with itself for its own amusement.
Antiviral is available on Shudder now.