Brandon Cronenberg, son of famed director David Cronenberg, looks to have soaked up much of his father’s influence concerning his feature film debut, Antiviral. Set to play at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival this September, /Film has just posted a brand new skin crawling trailer which reveals the seedy lows celebrity obsession could reach in Cronenberg’s mind.
Starring Caleb Landry Jones, most famously known as Banshee from X-Men: First Class, Antiviral comments on the celebrity culture our society holds on a pedestal with horrific originality. Cronenberg introduces us to the Lucas Clinic, a place which offers injections of diseases from your favorite socialite – for a price.
Jones stars as a worker for the clinic named Syd, an ambitious youngster who smuggles diseases out through his own body, flipping the stolen goods for a side profit. After injecting himself with a life threatening disease which kills popular celebrity Hannah Geist though, Syd is forced to uncover the mystery behind Geist’s death before he suffers the same fate.
Antiviral looks like a mindfreak sort of film, mixing elements of sci-fi absurdism with biological terror. Brandon’s father was always known for his body centric thrillers, citing The Fly and Scanners to name two, and it looks like David passed the torch to another generation. Color me excited to see how Brandon Cronenberg‘s film injects social commentary into such an outlandish story, but the Cronenberg name certainly is synonymous with such ambitious natures.
What do you think, will Brandon’s debut Antiviral be a thrilling smash hit?
