"Have you started bleeding yet? From your mouth..." Brandon Cronenberg's film Antiviral certainly carries the families DNA. It feels very much in the vein (pun intended) of either his father's Shivers or Rabid. Only here, the plot involves buying and injecting the blood (and potential diseases) of celebrities for a certain kind of media-high. The film played Cannes alongside Cosmopolis, making it the first father-son duo with films at that festival, but truth be told, I'm more interested in this one which looks to have 10x time energy, perhaps sacrificing a little brains to go for the visceral impact. Also, Hobo With A Shotgun cinematographer Karim Hussain shot the film, and this is always good with us.
The film follows Syd March, a man who works for a company that harvests diseases from celebrities and then injects them into paying clients. After becoming infected with the virus that killed superstar Hannah Geist, Syd must unravel the mystery surrounding her death to save his own life.
TIFF will be offering Antiviral North American debut, and there is a quite excellently cut trailer below that gives you a feel for Cronenberg's slightly off-kilter world.