Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!
In the documentary Trekkies, there’s a moment where someone who works at conventions talks about the time that he sold a class of the “Q virus,” a glass of water that actor John de Lancie drank from on a panel while he was extremely sick. Someone in the crowd bought the glass and immediately drank the water, knowing that it was likely he would catch whatever illness de Lancie had at the time. That kind of thinking is at the heart of Antiviral, a movie made by Brandon Cronenberg but that could have easily been made by his father David.
The basic conceit behind Antiviral is that in the future, the idea of celebrity worship has metastasized into something far more obsessive and destructive. One of the main ways in which this is expressed is in the dealing of viruses and pathogens that infect celebrities. So, it’s not just that you can get COVID just like Tom Hanks did. You can be injected with the exact strain of the virus that he had, harvested from his cells. You’re not just getting the same thing; it’s like he’s infected you himself.
