Before Brandon Cronenburg made us flinch at the sight of fire pokers in POSSESSOR, he made ANTIVIRAL in 2012. starting to think this guy has a thing for the early 2000s, and i really cant blame him.
the first time i watched this i had no real idea who David Cronenburg was, and i really didn't enjoy this movie very much. i'm a tiny bit older and a lot wiser now, so lets see if this movie is worth revisiting or if it should stay in 2012.
Syd March is an employee at a clinic that sells injections of live viruses harvested from sick celebrities to obsessed fans. Biological communion - for a price. Syd also supplies illegal samples of these viruses to piracy groups, smuggling them from the clinic in his own body. When he becomes infected with the disease that kills super sensation Hannah Geist, Syd becomes a target for collectors and rabid fans. He must unravel the mystery surrounding her death before he suffers the same fate.
The most common complaint about this movie is people calling it "boring", and that is very much by design. a lot of movies set in the future try to capture all of the advancements made in every aspect of there environments, where as this movie is more interested in the natural continuation of the world we live (lived) in right now. i'm a big fan of how this movies future feels rather mundane, since in my experience the future is always more mundane then you thought it would be. another reason why people may have called this movie boring is the way it uses silence. i will always prefer a movie that will show you whats happening instead of telling you, and boy oh boy does this movie show you in the most Cronenburg way possible. a character silent smoking a cigarette in an empty pool coneys more than a 7 act play in some cases, and this movie is packed full of moments like that.
so yes this movie isn't as in your face as your standard body horror dystopian tale might be, but the quiet and tense movies like this one tend to be the most effective.
i think people's biggest complaint about this movie is how uncomfortable and challenging it is to the BLUM-HOUSE movie viewers of the world, and isn't that the whole point?
8/10, worth revisiting for sure
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