Movies
Celeb Body Horror ‘Antiviral’ Gets UK Release
One of my favorite films of the past year was Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral, a celebrity body mod horror film that certainly left a mark with me.
While IFC owns domestic rights, the flick set for a limited cinema release in the UK on February 8, before a DVD release on February 11. Caleb Landry Jones, Sarah Gadon, Malcolm McDowell, Douglas Smith, Matt Watts and James Cade all star.
“Syd March (Landry Jones) is an employee at The Lucas Clinic – a company that sells injections of live viruses harvested from sick celebrities to fans who wish to fulfil their obsessive desire for real intimacy with their idols. As well as working for them, Syd also supplements his income by smuggling viruses out of the clinic in his own body in order to sell them on the black market. Constantly ill and losing his edge, Syd becomes careless and infects himself with an unusual virus carried by superstar Hannah Geist (Gadon).
When the news breaks that Hannah has died, Syd realises that the virus running rampant in his system will soon kill him too. Hallucinating and struggling to remain in control, Syd must race to solve the mystery surrounding Hannah’s death if he has any hopes to avoid suffering the same fate.“
Before updating the video nasty Faces of Death, director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei explored the dangers of online life in tech-thriller Cam, their feature debut that was acquired by Netflix in 2018 after making waves on the festival circuit.
At the end of last year, the Netflix exclusive quietly departed from the streaming platform, left without another streaming home.
It’s not an isolated story; Mike Flanagan’s Hush also left streaming entirely for a period until it was finally picked up on both physical media and other streaming services.
While the tech-thriller currently isn’t available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, or any other platforms, that’s not a problem for Cam thanks to a very cool move by Goldhaber: the director has made his breakout film accessible to watch online for free via his website.
As his site notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like :).“
No subscriptions or fees necessary, just hit play.
Cam follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), who works as an online cam girl obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger.
Written by Mazzei, a former camgirl, it uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. It only compounds her danger when the doppelganger enters the equation in Goldhaber’s engaging thriller.
For a deep dive into the treacherous world of Cam, listen to Horror Queers’ episode on it now.
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