Antiviral

Antiviral (2012) is a clinical body-horror sci-fi you can watch online on iFILM. Brandon Cronenberg's feature debut imagines a future where fans pay to be injected with the viruses of the celebrities they worship.

Syd March works at a clinic that harvests and sells those live infections. On the side he smuggles samples out by hosting them in his own body. Then he injects himself with the disease that just killed superstar Hannah Geist, and overnight he becomes prey for collectors and rabid devotees racing to own a piece of her. The clock is now his enemy. Caleb Landry Jones plays Syd as a man slowly dissolving from the inside, with Sarah Gadon and Malcolm McDowell circling the cold, sterile world around him.

This Canadian film takes the elder Cronenberg's fixation on flesh and sickness and bends it into something sharper: a satire of fame literalized as the exchange of bodily fluids. The look is all white walls, blood and hush. It rewards viewers who like their horror slow, queasy and free of jump scares. Stream Antiviral (2012) online on iFILM.