It's time to draw Cronenberg month to a close, and I thought a suitable way to wrap things up would be to take a look at the debut feature from Cronenberg Junior. Yes, I know Brandon Cronenberg has a newer film out in Possessor, but there'll be a time and a place for that later on. For now, let's look at where it all began for Brandon with 2012's Antiviral.

Antiviral takes place in an unspecified near future and follows Syd March, who works at a clinic that specialises in diseases. More specifically, they take bugs and infections that celebrities have had and sell them on to their most ardent fans at a premium price. It's a fascinating concept – especially looking back at the movie from a viewpoint in the 2020s – and if anything this vision of the future feels far closer now than it did on the movie's release. However Syd gets himself into rather more than he bargained for when he gets involved with Hannah Geist, one of the clinic's biggest seller who is now rather severely ill. Having collected a sample from her for the company, Syd decides to inject himself with it – inadvertently making himself a pawn in a bizarre game of industrial intrigue much larger than he could have imagined...

Antiviral is a pretty striking offering on a number of fronts, certainly visually, where its colour palette is often fascinatingly pared down. The world of Antiviral has a clinical, almost medicinal look for long periods. The performances are generally strong, with some fine cameo turns and a solid central turn from the bleak, nihilistic Syd as depicted by Caleb Landry Jones. But the real strength of this movie for me lies in its core concept – it's mighty Cronenbergian, and sure shows that the apple did not fall far from the tree. It may not go in your face body horror – although that element is doubtless there – but the backdrop of paranoia and doubt and obsession is all there in droves, as are the soft science-fiction flourishes. In short, I loved this movie, for all these reasons and one more – and not one I wave around lightly. Watching this one back on the back of a JG Ballard kick, this one literally feels like a Ballard story brought to life – although of course it's not based on one. But the deep obsession with celebrity and the twisted need to feel close to them conveniently marries up elements of Crash and The Atrocity Exhibition, and even the somewhat gentler Vermillion Sands, to absolutely great effect. This one almost invites a larger world, although I'm not aware of any plans to return to the setting – that's not to say it's at all unsatisfying in its current form, but a few shorts or a limited TV series would certainly pique my interest.

There were some small quibbles – the dialogue was sometimes a bit too quiet to really hear without cranking the volume up to the max, and the endeavours of some of the smaller side characters felt a bit unclear – I'd have liked more detail on some of those, as I'm sure at one point there was a guy selling celebrity meat (or presumably meat bred from celebrities) and that feels kind of big to glaze over. But those aside, there's a lot here is you're a fan of Cronenberg Sr, or even JG Ballard, or just strange dystopian sci-fi full stop.

RATING: 9/10. Just my type of film really, and feels like a really fitting modernisation of so many of the concepts that David Cronenberg used. While you can spot that family flourish, Brandon does manage to do something different here, indeed something unique that I've not seen before. As an exploration of an excellent core idea, this one really does its job well – it's stylish, it's pacy, it's well-acted and leaves you wanting more without leaving you feeling frustrated, which is certainly no easy feat to achieve! You could say my enthusiasm for this one was infectious (I know, I know) and I'm delighted to award this one 9/10.

Welcome back to Cronenberg month – because why the hell shouldn't May be Cronenberg month? - with a step back in time from our series opener, where we took a look at 1979's The Brood. Today we move on to the director's second feature length movie (perhaps third if you want to include 1970's Crimes of the Future) in Rabid. This story could be seen as something of an alternative zombie outbreak movie, although as I'm writing this review with a pandemic still sort of rumbling on there's elements here that do feel like they hit a bit too close to home. Anyway, I've done my damnedest not to hold that against it. I'm positively foaming at the mouth to watch it, so let's get stuck in!

The story begins with a bang – quite literally – with young Hart and Rose driving on their motorcycle when they have a high-speed crash. Rose is almost gone, but Hart gives permission for her to undergo a highly experimental plastic surgery. This sort of thing may sound a little familiar to  regular Cronenberg viewers, but I suppose at this point this core concept was relatively new. However the surgery has rather unexpected effects in turning young Rose into patient zero for a new sort of zombie plague, one where the victims still look relatively normal but still have the same burning desire to spread the plague to more and more people. It's not long until the whole local area is under lockdown, with martial law being enforced, and oh boy does it feel uncomfortable with some of the context that is fresh in the collective memory of 2020. The strange virus continues to spread while Hart tries to reconnect with Rose in a city rapidly falling into disorder, but will the two lovers be able to find each other once again?

I've watched most of Cronenberg's work by now, and honestly I have to say this one really feels like one of the weakest. It almost feels like it can't quite decide what it is – you couldn't call it a zombie film in the way that would satisfy fans of that particular subgenre, and while there are some bloody scenes there's probably not enough here for any of you serious gorehounds out there. Equally I don't feel like the emotional and personal story of Hart and Rose is really that well done to invest me in them as characters, and the many side characters we meet along the way just feel kind of like collateral damage waiting to happen rather than anything that integral to the story. I couldn't really make any connection to the finale, which made limited sense to me. Even the pandemic side of it just feels like background noise, and never really coming to fruition as a full element of the story. It occurs to me this actually bears a lot in common with Paul Tremblay's newest book Survivor Song, which I think pulls off the balance significantly better. There's nothing stinkingly wrong with it, but I did just find it a bit overlong and boring and a little hard to really invest in significantly as a viewer. Like I say, there are a handful of holes in the Cronenberg watch history, but this feels like it could well be the poorest.

RATING: 5/10. It's unlikely a director like this would ever score anything horribly bad, and even this one – which I have criticised above – has enough panache and flair and sufficient decent moments to be in the ballpark of being average. It just feels like it wanders and meanders a little, and can't quite decide what sort of film it ultimately wants to be, so more focus could have helped this one climb significantly higher. I've not seen the remake – I do tend to avoid that sort of thing on the whole – but if it maybe looked at one element a little more strongly than some of the others it could be an interesting watch. I'll mark that one down for some point in the future, but for now Rabid doesn't really get me into any kind of frenzy at 5/10.

2021 rolls into May now, and that brings us to Cronenberg month! Why Cronenberg month, I hear you cry? Because I say so, and what I so goes around these parts, that's why. In all seriousness, I've long been a fan of David's work, and son Brandon is also carving out a remarkably similar niche as something of an outsider producing really interesting films. It's some legacy, and through May I'll be starting with the work of the senior Cronenberg before moving onto a little something from Cronenberg Junior. And we're going back to the early days – although not the director's very first movie – with The Brood. This cast is led rather notably by Oliver Reed, who on reflection could probably have a themed month of his own around these parts – but what gravitas can this acclaimed
actor lend to this slice of body horror?

The Brood is a story about Frank Carveth, whose wife is undergoing a very unusual psychological treatment known as psychoplasmics, led by Oliver Reed's Dr Raglan. She's obviously been through plenty of trauma, as have many of the other inhabitants to the institute, but Raglan's relationships with the patients and their interactions make for plenty uncomfortably viewing. Frank begins to get a sense of just what danger his wife Nola might be in as the movie wears on, but there's an even more immediate threat than that as some of the dearest people around him get killed of one by one, murdered by strange, child-like shapes that we see very little of until the finale. As Frank desperately tries to get to his wife and end whatever bizarre force is destroying his and his daughter's life, there's a larger danger that could see them both dead...

There's good odds many of you out there might have seen this one already, but for those of you about 42 years late to the party I am going to endeavour to keep things spoiler free. This is an interesting piece, as it is a sort of body horror but that element is downplayed far more here than you might see in movies the likes of Videodrome and Scanners. There are certainly some gory moments, but only the one that really pushes into the flat-out grotesque. It's honestly more about the psychology and the connections between the characters, which does make it a pretty interesting movie. Reed is solid here as the creepy psychologist, and his patients – including a great turn from Samantha Eggar as Nola – do a fine job of portraying their distress along with the weird inter-dependence to the leader of psychoplasmics. Art Hindle as Frank Carveth is perfectly passable, and I want to give a nod to child actor Cindy Hinds too. Sometimes the children's performances can be a stumbling block in such movies, but not here.

There are some criticisms and niggles here and there – some of the lesser characters are maybe a little undercooked, which feels like a shame. The idea of psychoplasmics is never entirely clear to me, and I would have liked to have known more. My main reservation would probably be that the actual real body horror element is less than I would like – there might be a bit of personal taste in there, but it does play an important part in things, so it's still a valid point to me. Other than that, there's honestly very little to complain about. It's fair to say that this one doesn't quite hit the heights of some of the director's work into the 80s, but it remains well worth a watch today.

RATING: 7.5/10. Certainly a strange and interesting offering, and a movie that has many of the Cronenberg trademarks before we came to truly know them as Cronenberg trademarks. It's got the odd branch of medicine, the strange creatures and the distinctive element of body horror – if subtler here than you might associate with the director's work. It doesn't smash everything out of the park, but it held my attention all the way through and there's enough good here (especially if you do like the director's work subsequent this one) to ensure it has value investing your time in.

I've never quite understood how these double titles things happen – I mean maybe in the days of VHS there was value in trying to ape the title of a more successful movie, not to mention the many unofficial sequels that we tended to see back in the 70s and 80s. But why this should happen in 2018 I've never really grasped – maybe it's different names for different markets? Anyway, I watched this via Sky Cinema as Nobody Leaves, though when I look that title up on IMDB it sends me right to Braid. So there you go – one movie, two identities. And this was one of those movies that I went into knowing literally nothing about – just sounded like something that would fit the bill for us here at Film Gutter. And in the end... well... it was and wasn't.

Let's start with the story – Petula and Tilda are two twenty-somethings forced to abandon a large drug shipment in their apartment when the police come knocking. While they do escape arrest, they have what might be a larger problem – being $83,000 dollars in debt to a dealer by the name of Coco. They try and come up with some way to get the money, but only come up with one – to visit the home of their wealthy but disturbed childhood friend Daphne, who has been effectively playing a childhood game the three partook in ever since her younger days. As the pair arrive, they determine that they have to play along for enough time to find Daphne's safe before getting away with that stack of cash to pay Coco back – but the strange game itself is a threat to all three of them.

Now, on the surface that might sound relatively simple, and I am probably underplaying the complexity of this movie for two reasons – firstly I'm a little reticent to spoil everything that goes on here, and secondly because I don't really understand much else of what is going on here. The film certainly goes for a unique style – lots of smash cuts, strange colour palettes and trippy effects to accompany the various drug freak-outs of the characters – and almost all the dialogue and interaction does have a strange, stylised feel to it that doesn't quite seem to fit the real world.

The issue for me is that it just feels like nothing hangs together – I came to the end of this one totally baffled, and in all honesty by about halfway I was pretty much disinvested in what was going on. It doesn't feel coherent, and sadly seems as though the focus is more on cool and weird visuals than it is on stringing a plot together you can penetrate and characters you can bring yourself to care about. Nothing feels like it really matters before too long, and too much is just left dangling unexplained that could desperately have done with a revisit before the credits rolled.

RATING: 2.5/10. Don't get me wrong – I'm not averse to experimentation. In fact regular readers will know exactly how highly I respect movies trying something new, but it should be done for some kind of a reason. Nobody Leaves feels like it's trying to be different for the sake of being different, and that sadly is an idea that very rarely lands. It's ultimately just rather a mess, which again is not automatically a criticism – last week's movie Meat Grinder was kind of a mess, but it was bleak and compelling and still had some sort of logic to it. There was a reason it was like that. A movie can be a wild, exciting mess, or an entertaining mess, but sadly this one is neither. Everyone involved is no doubt trying hard, but if you can make head or tail of this one then you're doing a lot better than me. There was promise here in this concept, but less style and more substance was needed here – a simpler story and less flashy touches and this could have scored much higher, but with all its fundamental flaws I can only grade this one a 2.5/10.