Antiviral (2012) was a sci-fi/horror film directed by Brandon Cronenberg, the son of famous body-horror director, David Cronenberg. Severin released it as a two-disc set on 4k and Blu-ray. The movie has an interesting premise. In the near future, celebrity obsession has reached a level where people are paying for celebrity infections. There is an early scene where the company (The Lucas Clinic) is discussing “copy-protection” to keep the infections from spreading beyond the paying clients. There are celebrities waiting in the wings to sell their officially licensed infections to the companies. The main character is a salesperson for the Lucas Clinic. In the world of the film, there are even butcher shops that sell meat grown from celebrity muscle tissue cells. The movie has an unnerving tone with antiseptically clean looking environments. About halfway through the film, there is a scene that is very reminiscent of Videodrome. I do not want to ruin the twists and turns of the plot because there is a mystery at the center of this celebrity fixated world. It ends up being a dark and cynical film with themes about privacy, fandom, fetishes, and obsession.

The 4K disc has the movie, commentary track, and the trailer. The trailer starts off as a commercial for the fictional Lucas Clinic before morphing into a traditional trailer. The commentary is with the director (Brandon Cronenberg) and the director of photography (Karim Hussain). Brandon wrote most of Antiviral while still in film school. A lot of the city shots are CGI composites of multiple skylines to make the location feel like it could be anywhere. A one-off comment from Brandon was about including a slow-motion sneeze to satisfy the sneeze fetish community that was discovered while researching for the film. Karim and Brandon seem to get along well, joking and laughing during the commentary. Malcom MacDowell has a small part in the movie and Cronenberg and Hussain said he was a pleasure to work with.

The Blu-ray disc contains the movie, commentary, and many special features. The first one I checked out was an eight-minute short film called “Broken Tulips” which became the basis for “Antiviral”. It was like listening to a demo version of a song after hearing the album version. It wasn’t bad, but the audio and production values were obviously worse that the feature film. Next was a thirty-minute behind-the-scenes documentary. Cronenberg states that his inspiration for the film was caused by an illness that he caught. He started fixating on how it came from someone else’s body and how someone might enjoy that connection. One of the funniest quotes to me was Brandon Cronenberg saying, “Some of my family has experience in filmmaking”. For those that do not know, his father is legendary body-horror director David Cronenberg. Caleb Landry Jones, who plays the main character, impressed me as an actor and behind-the-scenes.

There is a short video about the restoration process. Cronenberg states that the movie aged well while not being initially successful. There’s a three-minute director’s vision short; the footage was all previously seen in the longer BTS extra. There are deleted scenes with an optional commentary. The director states that there is not anything wrong with the scene other than it slows down the pace of the film. One of the best scenes that was cut was showing a fan becoming famous for being a fan. There is a short two-minute featurette about the first meeting of actors Caleb Landry Jones and Sarah Gadon. Again, this extra looks to be taken from the longer BTS piece. There is a two-minute extra about the production design, again cut from the longer BTS documentary. Finally, there is a short cast and crew EPK. A trailer finishes off the special features on the Blu-ray disc. The picture quality of the movie on the Blu-ray is very good. Either version of the film will be a great viewing experience.

The movie is intriguing and is even better on a second viewing. The commentary is quality as is the longer behind-the-scenes bonus feature. Some of the extras are duplicated but there is still plenty of interesting extras. Combined with a high-quality restoration, I have no difficulty recommending this release for anyone’s collection.