Starring Caleb Landry Jones, Sarah Gadon
Directed by Brandon Cronenberg
Given that his father David has reigned as our nations most accomplished filmmaker for more than three decades, Brandon Cronenbergs directorial début seems destined to endure greater scrutiny than any other first feature in Canadian cinema history. And what does all of that examination uncover? A jumble of intriguing ideas that the filmmaker fails to explore with any satisfying results.
Somewhat aggravatingly, Cronenbergs only means of introducing his concepts is by having his characters explain them at length, thus bringing his film to a grinding halt. In the opening scene, clinic technician Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) explains to an eager patient that hes about to inject him with a trashy starlets strain of herpes. After work, he calls on a butcher shop where the proprietor explains that the slabs of meat being peddled are cloned from the screen icons muscle cells.
Again, the notion of a near future in which our societys obsession with celebrities has reached such absurd extremes that we must literally consume our pop culture idols brims with potential. However, Cronenbergs scattershot approach to satire distances us from his speculative reality rather than drawing us into it. Likewise, while his taste for body horror proves that hes definitely a skin graft off the old block, his lurid images lack the sexual undercurrent that lend his fathers work both a perverse intimacy and inherent wrongness.
Lacking both coherence and narrative thrust, Antiviral ultimately feels as stitched together as Frankensteins monster. Furthermore, it seems constantly at risk of coming apart at the seams.
