Antiviral

2012 Directed by Brandon Cronenberg

Halloween Marathon Day 4 Film 6

Cronenberg's visual DNA is passed down to his son Brandon through body horror... which Brandon sets as a near future nightmare. Syd March is a biotech employee who sells limited edition diseases to clients who wish to be closer to the celebrities they worship... Caleb Landry Jones plays Syd with a crudely sick quality. The film always sets the white levels so high he looks like he needs a blood infusion- which is certainly part of the point. Each day Syd seems to find new reasons to inject himself with the latest celebrity disease- and trying to sell it on the black market.

These ideas are portrayed as a twisted world full of corporate espionage and intrigue. The conspiracy of mass consumerism and addiction owned and manufactured by those in power. The body as product- even making fake celebrity renewable cell-steaks. Getting closer to our idols through eating their protein is quite the revolting idea, but many people collect experiences or signatures to get but a moment with them. Would you graft their skin to yours? We already have some technology to do such things for our own body- it would be a task of how our body would accept or reject the process.

What would make a human then? As we modify pig hearts or dead donors into life saving surgery already- substitutes or grown parts could become everyday tech from 3D printers. Our human bodies are simple carriers for disease- still functioning but also part of a pathogen that changes how our body interacts in the world. This film is an abstracted version of our current reality as a plague has brought humanity collective trauma. As deeply as Syd fetishizes the celebrity skin, he makes himself a process of this communal interaction- even taking part in the same things that would normally kill someone. Interactive symbiosis through disease with another being becomes the ghastly perfect form of connection.