Over the course of October, I shall be watching one horror movie a day and reviewing it right here for your reading pleasure. I haven't seen any of the films I'll be watching before and you can find the full list here.
Antiviral depicts a near-future world even more obsessed with celebrity than the one we currently live in; such a thing is clearly possible. Here, fans have the opportunity to inject themselves with the viruses experienced by their favourite celebs, rendering them joined at a "biological level". The Lucas Clinic provides such a service and has one Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) in its employment. He makes money off the side of his day job by using his body to incubate the viruses and sell them on through the black market. His well-oiled routine falters when he injects himself with the blood of the ill Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon), a much loved and popular figure, only to find out the next morning that the current virus killed her.
Tabloid press, gossip mags, reality television all push this idea of consuming celebrities and their lives, but it is a metaphorical consumption. In Antiviral, Brandon Cronenberg (son of David) has crafted a bleak satire around the idea of body commodification and that culture, taking our obsessions and making them a literal consumption. That idea gives birth to the film's one of the more disturbing elements as people will buy and eat meat made grown artificially from celebrity cells; it's pallid and fake-looking, but the near-rabid consumers waiting to buy a piece of their favourite celebrity don't care. Faces of famous people adorn the walls of just about everywhere and entire news programmes are devoted to their every move.
Cronenberg isn't saying anything we don't really know about celebrity culture here, but he manages to craft a world that feels remarkably plausible as well as full. Little details are dropped throughout the film that just enhance the fictional landscape and demonstrate how widespread it all is. Conversations that aren't central to the plot are all about the most intimate details of the big name stars or their latest illnesses or relationships. That builds into the corporate satire at the heart of the film in the Lucas Clinic or Vole & Tesser, companies which have literally commodified viruses to sell on to their fans. These companies, like our very own pharmaceutical industry, are always looking for the next big seller with little or no regard to any destruction they may cause.
It's an interesting concept and one which is served, for the most part, well by the film around it. Cronenberg doesn't go for his father's more visceral versions of body horror, though the blood splatters mount up before the end. Despite a couple of very trippy hallucination scenes, he instead opts for something more insidious by having Syd slowly being killed by something we can't see, but is desired by everyone for having been the virus that killed Hannah Geist. There's also something innately disquieting about the idea of people willingly infecting themselves with these viruses whilst living in our own world that does everything possible to stop that from happening. It's body modification at the biological level.
The film's languid pace works to its advantage initially, teasing out the world in which Syd operates and having faith in its audience to piece it all together. It contrasts sharply with the urgency that is exhibited by the ancillary characters, desperate to get their piece of the celebrity pie (or steak), marking Syd out swiftly as almost above this world, taking advantage of it without really buying in. However, when the mystery starts ramping up and Syd's life is in danger, the film barely ramps up a gear and it needs just that little bit more urgency to keep it going to what is a really unsettling and effective ending.
There is a lot going on in this film and for a debut directorial effort, it is remarkably self-assured. However, it doesn't quite capture you enough on a dramatic level and a film can have all the best concepts in the world, but if you start to lose interest in what's happening, something has gone awry. As it stands, Antiviral just about gets away with it thanks to a solid central performance from Jones and an ending to make you shiver.
- Becky
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Over the course of October, I shall be watching one horror movie a day and reviewing it right here for your reading pleasure. I haven't seen any of the films I'll be watching before and you can find the full list here.
Excision is probably the oddest movie that I've seen so far this month. It's a weird sort of mash-up of teen comedy and horror that sort of works, but also sort of doesn't. AnnaLynne McCord, cast expertly against type, stars as Pauline, an oddball teen misfit who doesn't really care if she pisses off the popular kids and doesn't really mind what they say to her in return. She's chastised at all times by her puritanical mother (Traci Lords, in a brilliant casting joke - also watch out for John Waters), mostly ignored by her wet blanket father (Roger Bart) and affectionately teased by her sister, Grace (Ariel Winter), who also happens to have cystic fibrosis. The cast elsewhere is excellent too; Marlee Matlin, Ray Wise and Malcolm McDowell pop up as staff at Pauline's school.
Pauline is possibly one of the weirdest teenage girls committed to film with her lanky hair, bad posture and even worse skin. She's the very antithesis of the usual magazine-perfect teens that McCord can usually be found playing. Unlike other teen misfits, Pauline is never given a chance for a beauty makeover and rejects any attempts to change her at all. Instead, she happily flies in the face of convention and social etiquette. She also happens to have particularly bloody masturbatory fantasies that usually involve a corpse or surgical operation. These scenes are stylishly shot, cutting into Pauline's day-to-day existence and offering the film's audience a glimpse into her psyche.
Excision's gleeful skewering of teen movie conventions gives it a darkly comic edge, one that serves the film well in its opening half. The traditional gawky girl gets to be with the hot guy plot is wonderfully subverted in one of the most matter-of-fact propositions you will ever see on screen. The act itself between Pauline and popular guy Adam (Jeremy Sumpter, formerly Peter Pan) is similarly clinical; Pauline knows exactly what she wants to get from the experience and acts and orders Adam around accordingly. There's a wry sense of humour here that helps offset some of the film's weirder moments.
However, as the second half of the film continues and Pauline begins to unravel even further, the macabre sense of humour takes a backseat and becomes more horrific as the film develops. The shift in tone doesn't wholly work, though the film continues to exude a confidence that is rare in directorial debuts (director Richard Bates Jr also wrote the screenplay). Once you slowly realise what Pauline intends to do to win her parents' approval, everything becomes that bit less amusing, even when the film is still seemingly wanting you to laugh. It's an awkward move, but it doesn't detract from the power of the ending, which is surprisingly even more horrifying than you expect it to be.
I seem to have developed a running theme of anti-heroines throughout this month's viewing, not something I had intended whilst choosing the films to watch. Films like American Mary, Teeth and now Excision all explore this idea of a female lead who, through circumstances both in and out of their control, decide to take a more violent route to get what they want. Pauline may take this to heartbreaking extremes, but it's fascinating to see a recent trend emerging of female horror characters who aren't just there to get naked or get slaughtered. There are a few other characters out there who fit a similar pattern, but the whole idea of the monstrous feminine is being played with a lot at the moment and producing some really interesting results.
I'm still not entirely sure what to make of Excision, but I can't deny that it's a storming central performance from AnnaLynne McCord and a real gut punch of an ending. There's just something a little off about it that I can't quite put my finger on yet; another watch may be required.
- Becky
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