24FPS @ LFF 2012: Antiviral

Dir: Brandon Cronenberg

It's a dangerous thing as a young filmmaker to make your first cinematic statement with a film that seems totally in thrall to another director, it's perhaps even more dangerous when that filmmaker is both one of the most renowned horror directors of his generation, and your Dad.  Brandon Cronenberg, on the evidence of Antiviral, couldn't be more of a chip off the old block if he tried.  In fact, if his feature debut were any more Cronenbergian it would essentially lapse into parody.  That said, there's one thing about Antiviral that allows it to overcome this glaring issue: it's excellent.

Cronenberg's concept is a strange extension of our celebrity obsessed culture; a near future in which clinics offer to infect people with diseases acquired from celebrities (specially altered so that they can't be passed from the infectee, for public health and copyright reasons).  Caleb Landry Jones plays Sid, a salesman for a biotech company with an exclusive agreement with Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon), who seems to be the most famous person in the world, though we never really know why.  Sid has been smuggling diseases out of the lab in his body, and selling them to a pirate, but after infecting himself with Geist's latest ailment he collapses, and wakes up to the news that she is dead.  

The premise strains credulity a little, but Cronenberg creates a consistent world for the film to take place in, and so you just about buy into a society so in thrall to celebrity that it has begun to clone their muscle cells into steaks for people to eat.  As well as a consistent story world, Antiviral has a distinct visual identity: the colour palette consists almost entirely of white, black, red and green, and Cronenberg and DP Karim Hussain exploit this to give the film a chilly, clinical, look that makes the entire world of the film feel like a giant hospital room.  There are some striking shots in the film too, not least the opening image of Caleb Landry Jones with a thermometer in his mouth or the first time we see megastar Hannah Geist in 'real life' rather than as an image in a poster or on a monitor.

Caleb Landry Jones has been something of a 'that guy' in movies over the last few years, and established himself as someone who takes on diverse projects and seems different in each of them.  It's hard to look at his Syd March; a ghostly husk of a guy who becomes more sickly with each passing scene and see any trace of, for example, the brother from The Last Exorcism or Banshee from X-Men First Class.  Landry Jones is great, leading us through the world of the film; first the legitimate disease industry, which he's pitching as much to us as to the character Syd is selling to in the first scene, and then the underground pirate industry.  The writing pitches the character well; he may not be super-smart, but he's not dumb either, so whether he makes a mistake or gains the upper hand with a smart move, we believe it from the character.  It's a rounded portrayal of a difficult and emotionally remote character.

Sarah Gadon (whose presence is yet another link to Cronenberg's father, as she's played the wife of a main character in each of his last two films), continues to show both that ethereal presence that made her so striking in Cosmopolis and that she's a very interesting actress whose career will likely be worth watching.  If you know any German at all then the name of her character, Hannah Geist, is likely to feel a little on the nose, but she's totally convincing as this untouchable and uber-famous beauty who seems almost totally removed from the world.  She has little real screentime, and almost no dialogue, but her presence permeates and to a large degree powers the film, and if there's one part of the premise that it's easy to buy into it is the fascination that Hannah seems to hold for the public, and for Syd.

The film develops interestingly as a thriller in its second half, going in a slightly different direction to that suggested by the corporate espionage of the first half hour, with Syd fighting against enemies external (the pirates who want the disease that killed Hannah Geist) and internal (the disease itself).  In a well shot series of scenes Syd finds himself held captive by both these things, bringing both of the thriller strands of the film to a head.  The set pieces aren't huge, because the budget clearly isn't either, but Cronenberg makes the small confrontational beats work well, and gets a fantastic look for his money, with a few sparingly used effects working wonders.  Most notable is a dream sequence in which Syd appears to imagine what he'll become after the disease takes effect, in a series of horrible images that echo elements of The Fly and Videodrome.

I don't want to get too deeply into the events of the film, because it does hold some surprises, notably an ending which is clever, satirical and disgusting (read vintage Cronenberg) and some fun supporting performances, notably from Malcolm MacDowell, who seems rather more engaged here than he has for a while.  Antiviral is a provocative, beautiful and entertaining film which harkens back to the best of David Cronenberg's early work in look and tone as well as in the way that its intensely nasty body horror (apparently all those skin crawling close ups of needles puncturing skin are real) both repulses and fascinates, and its ideas about celebrity, while extreme, are worth discussing.  The big caveat here isn't how good the film is - if you're a body horror fan it's one of the best for a while - it's that however good it is I can't quite tell how good a filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg is from looking at it, because this film seems so of his father that I don't get a great sense of Cronenberg junior's identity as a filmmaker.  This is a fine start, but next time he needs to look away from his father's legacy and make something with a more personal stamp, so we can see him as himself not - in a rather Cronenbergian notion - simply as an extension of his dad.
★★★★☆

Martyrs [18]

Dir: Pascal Laugier

I’m a pretty big horror fan, and I like to think I can handle pretty much anything a movie can throw at me, after all I survived watching Gaspar Noe’s IRREVERSIBLE. Aside from that memorable piece of unpleasantness though, Martyrs is probably the single most depraved, the single most impactful, horror film I’ve seen at a cinema.

Pascal Laugier’s second feature film has been sucked in to the debate around films like Saw and Hostel, the so called ‘torture porn’ genre. Martyrs is so much more than that, it’s a film that uses graphic and unstinting brutality, but the difference is that this film isn’t merely concerned with gore for the sake of entertainment, it wants to get under your skin. Eli Roth wants you to revel in his film's violence, to enjoy it, Pascal Laugier never asks that of his audience – it’s out to disturb, to disquiet, and it achieves that aim from first frame to last.

This is a challenging film to review because it takes several unexpected gear shifting turns including, two thirds of the way in, one that completely alters the film, and I don’t want to spoil any of its many profound shocks, but there’s also so much that warrants discussing here, more so than in most horror films. Laugier’s story starts out relatively simple; Young Lucie escapes from a place where she has been held prisoner and tortured for a considerable time. 15 years later Lucie (Mylene Jampanoi) tracks down and takes her revenge on the people she believes held her captive. Lucie’s girlfriend Anna (Morjana Alaoui) arrives to help her clean up.  That takes us only about a third of the way into the film, but I really can’t say more, because I’d be spoiling things.

Intensity seems to have been Pascal Laugier’s watchword in creating Martyrs. Even before the violence really explodes he creates an atmosphere of terror, with an early scene in what appears to be an orphanage where Lucie and Anna are growing up. The use of sound, and the way Laugier barely lets us see anything in this scene sets the audience immediately on edge, where they will remain for the next 97 minutes. It’s once we get into the house where most of the film will take place that Martyrs really comes to life. After five minutes of scene setting there’s a knock at the door and from then on out the film offers almost no respite from brutality and fear.

The 45 or so minutes of Lucie and Anna carrying out and cleaning up Lucie’s revenge are perhaps Martyrs most conventional passage. The beats are familiar, and an early twist very guessable, but its Laugier’s execution that really impresses. He’s got all the details right, most notably the blood, which seems so simple, but movies so frequently get wrong, the blood here is utterly convincing, and that makes the rest of Laugier’s illusion play. The special effects make up is simply astonishing, there is an especially wince inducing scene in which Anna sews up slices that have been cut into Lucie’s back, but all the make up is stunning, particularly towards the end of the film. These things help, but what makes Martyrs the intensely riveting thing it is is the sheer ferocity of it. Most movies, even in the horror genre, that feature violence don’t really look like they hurt. The violence of this film is so palpable that you almost feel it yourself, and that’s what really makes it effective, if extremely difficult.

The screenplay is pretty basic, light on dialogue, but Laugier gives his characters just enough substance, and hints enough at their relationship, to make them sympathetic. In this lies Laugier's true masterstroke. Most horror films get down to their final girl, the one you are rooting for, the one you want to see kill her tormentor(s) and escape from whatever situation she’s become trapped in. Martyrs forces you to have a completely different relationship with its final girl, to hope that she’ll die not because you dislike her, or because it will be cool, but because it would be the kindest thing, and her ultimate victory. This is a genuinely uncomfortable place to find yourself, and Laugier makes you live in it for a long time.

Morjana Alaoui and Mylene Jampanoi both give strong performances, Jampanoi’s ferocity (particularly during one hideous killing with echoes of IRREVERSIBLE) dominating the film’s first half and Alaoui’s slow discovery of strength and resolve powering the second. Alaoui has the more shaded role, and walks away with the acting honours, but both give searingly memorable performances.

Laugier’s big twist will divide people. It takes the film into a different, perhaps slightly less believable, but ever darker, realm. It explains what has happened to Lucie in a way you’ll never be able to predict. Some will find it silly, and for a while I was unsure what to make of it, but it’s like John Doe says in Se7en, "you have to see the whole complete act." Without its third act Martyrs would be an impressively intense, well acted, and exceptionally nasty horror movie, with it it becomes something far more powerful, and more memorable. This third act is also, even by the standards of this film, unspeakably brutal. For about fifteen minutes all we see is one session of torture after another and then, just as you thought it couldn’t go to a place that was any more depraved and fucked up, the final act reveals itself. It is astounding, and remains burned into my brain.

I’d love to talk about Martyrs in more detail, but I fear that if I give away its twists and turns its incredible impact will be lessened. I’ll say this, don’t let anyone tell you that this is simply torture porn; it isn’t, as distressing and as violent as Martyrs is there are moments in it that approach profundity, which immediately marks it out as more than simple violence for violence sake. Martyrs, as I said to Pascal Laugier and Morjana Alaoui after the Q and A, is not fun, it’s not a film you’ll enjoy on any usual level, but it is a great film, one that any strong stomached horror fan should seek out, because it will get to you on levels that few other horror films even approach.