If you follow any of my terrible attempts at writing, then you might have gleaned I have a bit of a love affair with the work of David Cronenberg. I like what he does and how he does it.
While his films still maintain a garish and often violent quality, it’s his 80’s films that maintain to be his most bizarre, grotesque and connotatively dense. That’s why it’s great to see Brandon Cronenberg, his son, pick up the work his father left behind before he began churning out the crime/period pieces he’s attuned to now.
Antiviral looks to be a journey into the realm of self-modifications, sickness and body-horror (sounds familiar); topics that David painted with broadly some decades ago.
The film follows a clinician who sells live viruses cultured from celebrities to star-obsessed fans. When he obtains a disease cultivated from a huge star, he becomes the object of fans’ obsessions as he races to cure himself before he dies.
From the trailer you can see that not only does the apple not fall far from the tree, but the young auteur’s first feature certainly seems nice to look at as well.
While the film screened earlier this year at Cannes to mixed reviews, it’ll make its North American debut this September at the Toronto International Film Festival.