MCBASTARD'S MAUSOLEUM: ANTIVIRAL (2012) (Severin Films 4K Ultra HD Review + Blu-ray Screenshots).

ANTIVIRAL (2012)

Label: Severin Films

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: Unrated

Duration: 107 Minutes 41 Minutes

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo or 5.1 Surround with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)

Director: Brandon Cronenberg

Cast: Sarah Gadon, Caleb Landry Jones, Malcolm McDowell, Joe Pingue, Nicholas Campbell, James Cade, Wendy Crewson

Antiviral (2012) was the debut feature film from writer/director Brandon Cronenberg's, establishing him as a body-horror auteur, much like his father David Cronenberg (Rabid). In it Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones, Twin Peaks: The Return) is a sales representative for The Lucas Clinic, a company which harvests infectious pathogens from celebrities for injection into obsessed fans who want to have a perverse shared biological experience with the celebrities they obsess over. It's an interesting world he creates here, this only slightly hyper-real vision of celebrity obsessed fandom and how fucking twisted it can get has only come closer to reality thirteen years later.

The pathogens harvested from Lucas Clinic's exclusive hot celebrity Hannah Geist (Sarah Gordon, Dracula Untold) are easily the company's biggest seller, and Syd is a bit of an obsessed fanboy of hers himself. We learn that he has secretly been stealing her pathogen samples by injecting himself at work and smuggling it out of the building in his body, using himself as a human incubator to breed the viruses, and using a piece of stolen equipment from his company's lab to crack the viral-copyright, and then selling them to Arvid (Joe Pingue, Pacific Rim) a viral-bootlegger who works at Astral Bodies, a celebrity meat market where the carne is grown from the cells of celebrities, which on it's own is an idea that could have been exploited for it's own movie. By the way, this whole human cell meat-steak has since this film bizarrely become a thing, just look up "ouroborus steak" and prepare to have your mind blown and your stomach turned.

After Syd's co-worker Derek is busted for also smuggling proprietary pathogens his boss Lucas (Nicholas Campbell, The Brood) asks Syd to take his place and harvest a pathogen from the newly Hannah. After extracting her blood he quickly injects himself with a sample and falls quite ill, only learning later that Hanna has died from her illness, and that her virus, which he just injected into his own body, was an engineered with no known cure. According to Hannah's physician Dr. Abendroth (Malcolm McDowell, A Clockwork Orange), a subtly creepy doc who is also a Geist super-fan, who admits to Syd that he has had patches of her skin grafted to his own - what a world!

This leads him down a rabbit-hole of trying to discover who engineered the virus and infected Hanna, to what ends, and to find a cure for himself, which leads to shady interactions with an underground virus trafficker Levine (James Cade, Stardust) and the Lucas Clinic's chief competitor Vole & Tesser via co-owner Mira Tesser (Wendy Crewson, The Santa Clause). As the viral clock ticks down and the virus begins having a degenerative effect on Syd the question is whether he can find the cure before the virus does him in. The climax amps up the grotesqueries with a final scene that is both the logical next step, but also macabre to the max, highlighting the bloodsucking nature of celebrity obsession.

The whole concept her is so skin crawling and disgusting, but man has got legs to spare, and there's plenty of intrigue to it, but it is so gross when you really think about it. It's like if your favorite celebrity had HIV or another terminal virus, and you wanted to have it extracted from their body and have their infected cells injected into your body so you can feel their illness inside you, it just a gross but utterly fascinating concept. The film has a look that I would call dirty white antiseptic, there's lot of bleached white surfaces throughout, feeling almost monochrome at times, but it just feels unclean and made me feel queasy throughout. Once Syd's illness really starts to take hold and he's bleeding from his mouth and vomiting blood onto clean white surfaces, it makes for a striking and grotesque contrast.

Brandon Cronenberg's debut film did not get a lot of love when it initially arrived on the scene, in fact it was eight years between this and his next film Possessor (2012), and Oi remember every couple of years thinking to myself 'is Cronenberg Jr. ever going to make another film?', but in the interim the film really came into it's own, what with a worldwide pandemic making the film oddly relevant, and celebrity fandom only getting more and more creepier as time marches on. It's great to see Brandon Cronenberg following in the body-horror tradition of his father, a chip of the old block for sure but adding his own unique spin on it. This is not someone retreading what has come before, but someone taking the body horror concept into new and creepily relevant directions, and doing it rather successfully. If I had anything negative to say, and I don't really, I would say it's a bit clinical and cold, there's really no getting to know anyone here, we're just observing this sick new celebrity obsession take hold, but you don't really "get it" or understand it, but I am of the opinion I don't need it explained to me, just immerse me in the world, entertain me with a cool idea, and creep me out, and on that level I was absolutely transfixed by Antiviral.

Audio/Video: Antiviral (2003) makes it 4K UHD debut from Severin Films, newly scanned in 4K from the 35mm protection internegative supervised by director Brandon Cronenberg and cinematographer Karim Hussain (Infinity Pool), presented in 2160p Ultra HD with WCG color-grading. I've only ever watched this previously on DVD, so it's quite an upgrade, the whites are much crisper, the sparse use of primary colors more vibrant, and more detailed and textured. A featurette on the disc explains that the digital shot film was always maintained a much truer whiter aesthetic on digital, but 35mm prints leaned more sickly yellow, but that they preferred the texture of how it looked on film compared to the digital intermediate. Now with new digital film grading tools they've scanned the 35mm element protection negative and are able to achieve the preferred antiseptic bleached-white grade of the digital intermediate, and it really does look terrific. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo or 5.1 surround with optional English subtitles, the tracks sound terrific. The minimalist sound design of the largely dialogue driven film comes through with nice definition and fidelity, especially the electronic thrum of E.C. Woodley's score.

This 2-disc standard release version includes an healthy amount of extras, starting off with an an Audio Commentary With Writer/Director Brandon Cronenberg And Director Of Photography Karim Hussain, in which they talk a lot about the look and aesthetic of the film, and the Trailer on the UHD disc. All the remaining extras, including the commentary and trailer are also found on the Blu-ray, alongside the HD version of the film. Archival extras comes by way of the 30-min Anatomy Of A Virus: Making-Of Featurette; 5-min of Deleted Scenes With Optional Commentary By Brandon Cronenberg And Karim Hussain, the 3-min Brandon Cronenberg: A First-Time Director's Vision; the 2-min First Meeting: With Actors Caleb Landry Jones And Sarah Gadon; and 2-min The Design Of Antiviral – Interview With Production Designer Arvinder Greywal; plus the 2-min Manufacturing Celebrity – EPK With Cast And Crew.

Stuff I think is new going by memory, I gave my DVD to a friend a few years back, are the 8-min Broken Tulips – Short Film Written And Directed By Brandon Cronenberg which feels like a proof of concept for the feature film; and 9-min Reviving A Dead Cell – Brandon Cronenberg And Karim Hussain Discuss The Restoration, in which they talk about the digital intermediate versus 35mm transfer versions of the film and how they were able to combine the best of both worlds with this new 4K version from Severin Films.

It should be noted that there is a Limited Edition 3-disc edition exclusive to the Severin website which includes additional extras, booklet and slipcover, listed here:

- Introduction To The Cannes Cut By Writer/Director Brandon Cronenberg And Director Of Photography Karim Hussain

- FLIR P660 Thermal Camera Test

- Exclusive Booklet By Claire Donner Of The Miskatonic Institute Of Horror Studies

- Slipcover with artwork designed by Eric Lee

The 2-disc 4K UHD/BD arrives in a dual-hubbed black keepcase with a single-sided wrap featuring new artwork by Eric Lee. You can buy that HERE:

Special Features:

Disc 1: Ultra HD:

- Audio Commentary With Writer/Director Brandon Cronenberg And Director Of Photography Karim Hussain

- Trailer (1:54)

Disc 2: Blu-ray:

- Audio Commentary With Writer/Director Brandon Cronenberg And Director Of Photography Karim Hussain

- BROKEN TULIPS – Short Film Written And Directed By Brandon Cronenberg (7:51)