Antiviral Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.5

Antiviral Blu-ray Movie Review

Celebrity Sickness

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater August 15, 2013

The wormy apple doesn't fall far from the twisted tree. As much as I'd like to take Antiviral entirely on its own merits, it's impossible not to mention that the film's director, Brandon Cronenberg, is the son of that other filmmaking Cronenberg—David—the horror maestro behind Rabid and Shivers, Scanners and Videodrome, The Fly and Naked Lunch. The elder Cronenberg made a career out of grossing us out with the viral and the venereal, madness and mutations, and his progeny—from this first glance—seems to share these same grisly preoccupations. Were Antiviral shot in the late 1970s, it would fit easily in papa Cronenberg's inflamed, seeping oeuvre. It's bloody, body-obsessed, and it manages to build a modestly effective, not-so-distant-future dystopian sci-fi world on a seriously meager budget.

If only it were better. The project started as a short film that had the unexpected opportunity to be expanded into a feature, and like many shorts gone supersized, it seems both padded and empty, with a decent premise but a story that drags on to unnecessary lengths. We might say it suffers from the same high-concept, low-energy fatigue that plagued David Cronenberg's early effort Crimes of the Future, which film critic Kim Newman called "boring and interesting at the same time." That's Antiviral—at times unbearably dull, but strangely fascinating too.

Antiviral envisions a world where obsession with celebrity has reached its (il)logical extreme. No longer content with tabloid magazines and 24- hour TV coverage, the fame-infatuated public has found a new, literally sick way of living vicariously through the stars. For a price, the most devoted fans can visit the Lucas Clinic, where they're injected with illnesses harvested directly from their favorite actors, actresses, and pop idols. Want a young glitterati member's particular strain of herpes simplex shot directly into your upper lip? No problem, so long as you have the cash.

In Antiviral, diseases have replaced autographs as the coveted celebrity collectible, and people go to the gaunt, sickly-looking Syd March (X- Men: First Class' Caleb Landry Jones) to get them. Syd is a sales associate at the Lucas Clinic, responsible for helping customers pick out viral and bacterial infections. What his boss doesn't know, however, is that Syd is also running a black market celebrity disease pirating operation out of his stark white apartment. (Like most sci-fi dystopias, this one too is drained of color.) At the office, Syd injects himself with whatever the hot new illness is, and when he gets home, he pulls some of his blood and gets to work on replicating the disease, using a machine that can override the Lucas Clinic's stringent copy protection technology. It's like Digital Rights Management—DRM—but just swap out "digital" with "disease."

If you're guessing that Syd's infection stealing eventually catches up with him—in more ways than one—then you're far ahead of Antiviral's simultaneously simple and obtuse plot. Syd's troubles start when he injects himself with the blood of the apparently famous-for-being-famous Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon), the celebrity "face" of the Lucas Clinic, who is suffering from a mysterious sickness that promises to be huge in the underground disease trade. Whatever it is, it unexpectedly turns out to be lethal, spurring Syd on a race against his biological clock to find a cure. The progressively symptomatic Syd is also pursued by Levine (James Cade), the leader of a rival piracy group, and the obsessive Dr. Abendroth, Hannah's personal physician, played by the legendary Malcolm McDowell. Inevitably, blood is shed, needles prick skin, and—apropos of the Cronenberg family name— bodies are grotesquely mutated.

Antiviral operates on a novel premise and has a few good visual ideas—including lots of Kubrickian single-perspective symmetry—but Cronenberg the younger is ultimately a bit too obvious in his indictment of celebrity culture. The film might've been more successful as a sci-fi satire along the lines of Brazil; instead, bled entirely of comedy, it seems to take itself far too seriously, a problem that's exacerbated by an unjustifiably long runtime. Antiviral is somnambulantly paced, shambling through a nearly action-free series of events that aren't quite enough to sustain a feature-length film. An even more detrimental problem is the fact that, as a protagonist, Syd is a total blank. We know nothing about him. His mood rarely changes. He's not so much a character as a cipher. To some extent, this plays into the film's whole antiseptic vibe—the white walls, the gleaming lights, the featureless rooms—but it gets tiring somewhere around the 60-minute mark. This isn't to say that Calab Landry Jones isn't terrific in the role—he's great, and I think he has a lot of potential as a "cult" actor—but more that the role itself is severely underwritten, much like the film as a whole.

Antiviral Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

For such a low-budget film, Antiviral boasts a very impressive 1080p/AVC-encoded Blu-ray presentation. Cinematographer Karim Hussain previously shot the insanely oversaturated Hobo with a Shotgun, and he takes the completely opposite approach here, giving Antiviral a bleached-white antiseptic vibe, almost entirely free from strong color. The one exception, of course, is blood, which—against such a clean background— practically spurts out of the screen. It's an interesting look—the mix of whites, reds, and strong contrast—and it goes a long way towards upping the film's production value. Hussain shot digitally using the trusty Arri Alexa—one of the most common go-to rigs nowadays—and he gets the most out of the camera by putting some seriously sharp lenses in front of it. The level of detail in the image is rarely short of exceptional, bringing crisp-edged clarity to fine facial and clothing textures, and not just in closeup. I'd go so far as saying that, resolution-wise, this is one of the tightest looking pictures I've seen this summer. And there's nothing here to distract from the strikingly clear image. Light source noise is occasionally visible during darker sequences, but there are no signs of DNR, heavy-handed edge enhancement, or any compression/color depth issues aside from some light banding around strong light sources. Fantastic.

Antiviral Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

You'll find two audio options on the disc, a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, and an uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 stereo mix-down. The multi-channel offering is the default, and—in terms of sound design—it shares a lot in common with the stark, minimalist visuals. There's a decent amount of ambience in the rear channels, along with occasional cross-channel effects, but what really drives the mix is composer E.C. Woodley's ominous electronic score, which swells and jitters and unlooses waves of ultra-deep subwoofer output, rumbling to accentuate the mounting tension. The music threatens to overwhelm certain scenes, but it sounds great—dynamic and clear and immersive. Throughout the film, dialogue is perfectly balanced and easy to understand, but if you need some help, the disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles, which appear in yellow lettering.

Antiviral Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary: Brandon Cronenberg and cinematographer Karim Hussain go in-depth about their intentions for the look and feel of the film.
• Anatomy of a Virus (HD, 29:44): A lengthy production documentary that features interviews—with the cast, the director, and the film's producers—and lots of behind-the-scenes material.
• Deleted Scenes (HD, 5:11): A few short scenes that were cut for timing and clarity after the film's premiere at Cannes. With optional commentary from the director.
• Behind the Scenes (HD, 12:46): Basically, a truncated, electronic press kit version of "Anatomy of a Virus," cut from the same interviews.
• Trailer (HD, 1:53)

Antiviral Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

First time director Brandon Cronenberg has set off in his father David's footsteps, creating a high-concept piece of body-horror that seeks to disturb mentally as much as it does viscerally. There are definitely some interesting ideas here—and Antiviral does look fantastic, with a stark white and red color palette—but the film unfortunately suffers from an incurable case of poor pacing, sleepwalking through a story that's more padded than action-packed. (It's no surprise to learn the movie was expanded from a short; it could stand to be cut back by a good 20 minutes.) Still, IFC's Blu- ray release is currently selling for a cut-rate price on Amazon, so if you're looking for some new dystopian sci-fi and are willing to value cool visuals over a compelling plot, Antiviral might be worth your time.