Cronenberg caught something from dad

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SUPPLIED PHOTO Caleb Landry Jones, as Syd, plays a deadly game in Antiviral. (POSTMEDIA)

If films and film franchises can be rebooted, why not film directors?

Antiviral announces the coming of Cronenberg Version 2.0 in the person of David Cronenberg's son, Brandon Cronenberg, who can truly be said to be a chip off the old whatsit.

Dad David has departed from the cerebral body-horror genre he essentially pioneered back in the '70s and '80s with films such as Scanners, The Fly and Videodrome. The elder Cronenberg has since turned away from the mutant milieu for more grounded fare such as his Freud vs. Jung drama A Dangerous Method and his Russian Mafia crime drama Eastern Promises.

Brandon Cronenberg steps in to fill the void left by his father with Antiviral, a film that acts as a homage to his pop with its austere Toronto sets, character names that reek with significance (Hannah Geist?), and a perverse premise.

How strange that a film so painstakingly current would evoke nostalgia.

Antiviral is set in a contemporary kind of future in which celebrity worship has literally reached fever pitch. Forsaking the "do no harm" dictum of the Hippocratic oath, clinics have popped up trading in celebrity viruses. If you really love a given star, you can pay to be infected by whatever microscopic malady they are carrying in order to feel the illusion of intimacy.

Such is the career of Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones), a virus trader who makes prospects believe being infected with a star's case of herpes simplex is as good as sharing a lingering kiss.

In a way, Syd isn't just a salesman at the club; he's a member. He routinely infects himself with celeb viruses and sells them on the black market. His heart (and other vulnerable organs) especially belongs to flawless blond superstar Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon), whom we know only as a celebrity.

Is she an actress or a Kardashian-like fame entity? In this world, it doesn't matter. She is a consumer commodity, and to an extent, she is a willing partner in her own commodification. But suddenly, she suffers a particularly malignant virus that threatens to kill her, with Syd's likely demise to follow. To save his own life, Syd, growing ever sicker, must journey to the bottom of the celebrity worship pit if he can save his own life.

If Antiviral is a homage, it pays particular tribute to Videodrome (1983) with its woozy, hallucinogenic ambience and its double indictment of a corrupt media and an audience complicit in its own degradation. Like dad, Brandon can actually induce a kind of physical revulsion at times, not just with images but with ideas, which here includes a cannibalistic variation of the virus biz.

Jones (the young actor who played Banshee in X-Men First Class) makes for a comically untrustworthy salesman, but he does manage to convey an intensity that proves compelling.

The movie on the whole is an undeniably powerful first feature. It is also relentlessly derivative.

Brandon Cronenberg demonstrates he may have the talent to eventually leave his father's shadow. It remains to be seen if the inducement of originality is sufficient to make him venture outside that abiding paternal shade.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Movie Review

Antiviral

Starring Caleb Landry Jones and Sarah Gadon

Grant Park

14A

108 minutes

3 stars out of five

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 12, 2012 D5