Cannes 2012 Review: Brandon Cronenberg’s Odd First Film ‘Antiviral’

As initially stated in my tweet immediately after seeing this: “weirdest, sickest shit I’ve seen yet.” Indeed. Antiviral is the directorial debut of one Brandon Cronenberg, son of the legendarily twisted filmmaker David Cronenberg, and it involves celebrity obsession taken to the extremes. Imagine a culture, a world like our own, where the popular masses are so into celebrities, that they pay money to be injected with the same disease a celebrity recently had to feel a sort of “biological communion.” Where can they go with that idea? Only the Cronenbergs can make it as weird and as sick as this is, but still utterly fascinating in its own right. Antiviral focuses on a young technician named Syd March (played by Caleb Landry Jones) at one of the major clinics that exclusively licenses, and obtains, diseases from celebrities, puts a “copy protection” on them, and sells them to any paying individual. …