There’s a point in Brandon Cronenberg’s first movie ANTIVIRAL (2012) where a TV interviewer asks a CEO if our fascination with celebrities has become unhealthy. Generally I hate when a dystopian satire has to have characters point out that it’s a dystopia (see ROBOCOP 3), but I understand why Cronenberg couldn’t resist – in his world fans are paying to be infected with celebrity illnesses. Their obsession is literally unhealthy!
Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones, THE DEAD DON’T DIE) is a creepy man-bunned sales associate for the Lucas Clinic, industry leader in celebrity pathogens due to their exclusive line with Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon, DRACULA UNTOLD, FERRARI). One of Syd’s colleagues, Derek (Reid Morgan, CASINO JACK) gets samples directly from Geist, and the lab alters it to be non-contagious. Copy protection. Then Syd sits down with clients and lustily describes how something that touched their idol’s lungs will touch theirs, an ultimate form of intimacy.
Yeah, this is serious, employees get screened by security on the way out every day, like a shitty mall job where they suspect you of shoplifting. Syd doesn’t have to smuggle out vials, though, because he injects himself in the bathroom and uses stolen lab equipment in his apartment to harvest it for his black market connection Arvid (Joe Pingue, THE BOONDOCK SAINTS).
I like how this is pretty much a cyberpunk movie, but with biological viruses instead of computer programs. He even wears a skinny tie like Johnny Mnemonic. You’ve got cutthroat corporations, a sketchy underground, a rogue agent, and it turns into a thriller with twists, conspiracies, backroom deals and undercover missions.
When Derek is busted for piracy Syd is sent to do a “house call” with Hannah Geist. It’s a heavy scene because he walks in, there’s a room full of flowers and concerned loved ones. And he’s coming in carrying a medical bag, like an old timey doctor, but he’s not here to help.
After that one, of course, he can’t resist getting high on his own supply. Yes, it’s valuable, but I get the sense he also gets off on it. He doesn’t gossip like his clients and co-workers (who all obsess about a rumor that Hannah Geist was born without a vulva and has to wear specially designed underwear) but I think he’s as much or more obsessed. So he puts some of what Hannah has in himself… and then the next day sees on the news that she died. Which is worrying, you know?
Jones has a very particular off-putting quality that often gets him cast as the supporting weirdo, so he’s an odd choice for a lead most of the time. On this one it seems pretty natural though – I don’t know if this would work with an actor who ever traffics in charm. It’s a particularly gross role because he has to play various levels of sickness – looking pale and tired, eyes bloodshot and bleary, drooling, coughing up blood, collapsing on the floor and not being able to get up until the next day. Also we have to buy him as a guy whose stalkery clients will accept as a fellow traveler (and possibly be correct).
Man, these Cronenbergs really know how to find new concepts of technology and human behavior for us to be unsettled by. This is Brandon’s movie that’s most like something his dad would do, but it’s not at all a copycat. And he does a good job of folding in new ideas as it goes deeper into this world. It’s a while before we find out that they also clone slices of celebrity flesh for their fans to eat. The line for Hannah steaks after she dies is like an out of control hipster bakery, but way more desperate. And it gets weirder than that. Like when Hannah’s doctor (Malcolm McDowell, TANK GIRL) reveals that he has swatches of different celebrites’ skin grafted to his forearm, or at the end when (ENDING SPOILER) Syd gets off on sucking blood from a tube of cloned Hannah Geist flesh protruding from an iron lung.
If I’m not mistaken, it’s never discussed whether Hannah is an actor or singer, or maybe she doesn’t do any art at all. The job of celebrities in this world may just be to be a pretty person who’s chased around and pornographically spy-cammed on TV and in magazines. The platitude that I started this review with – that we’re unhealthily obsessed with celebrities – is obviously built into the premise. But I think a more powerful point it’s making is just how happy corporations and their employees are to profit from something that’s unhealthy. It’s not just CRASH, where there’s a subculture of of edgy, fringe fetishists who are into some freaky shit. It’s a mainstream, accepted thing, with multiple successful companies competing for the market, feeling on their high horse about stopping corporate piracy and bootleggers, their employees competing to move their way up. Nobody feels bad about what they’re selling people, more likely they’re proud of it. That’s the most believable part.
Cronenberg definitely improved in his second and third movies (POSSESSOR and INFINITY POOL) – better performances, more precision in his storytelling, even crazier ideas that dig into your skin and wiggle around under there. But this is a really strong debut, a good execution of a great idea, and well designed to depict a slick corporate world on a lower budget. Production designer Arvinder Greywal had done LAND OF THE DEAD, JENNIFER’S BODY, RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE and has worked with the senior Cronenberg. One of director of photography Karim Hussain’s previous works was HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN; he has stuck with Cronenberg and also shot ORPHAN: FIRST KILL.
