Antiviral is a none-too-subtle comment on tabloid-generated fandom. But it's undeniably intriguing and loaded with Cronenbergian atmosphere.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 1, 2017

It's a work that feels technically precise but trying just a little too hard

| Aug 11, 2017

How sick can fans of a celebrity get? Very, answers "Antiviral." Imagine fan fetish culture metastasizing. A pox on consumers and capitalists alike, Brandon Cronenberg sneers.

| May 11, 2013

If Cronenberg's not yet a dead ringer for his iconic dad, he's taken an intriguing first step.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 19, 2013

The pace is uneven, the energy sluggish (even the arrival of Malcolm McDowell in the third act doesn't pep things up) and the film feels overlong.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 18, 2013

A slick, vapid thriller. Cronenberg has style and flair, but his all-too-obvious ideas about fame leave us with caricatures, not characters.

| Apr 15, 2013

What Jones hasn't been given is a character to play. Syd is a cipher, neither sympathetic nor hateful, nor even interestingly human.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 12, 2013

Eventually the clammy spell of this handsomely designed but solemnly paced movie begins to wear off, and you long for a little action or at least some fresh air.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 11, 2013

Before long, the aggressive sleekness of Antiviral becomes its own kind of ennui.

| Apr 11, 2013

The movie can be repulsive at times, but Cronenberg is more interested in ideas than in blood and guts.

| Original Score: B | Apr 11, 2013

Papa Cronenberg must be proud, but be advised: If there's a blood test in your future, book it before seeing this movie.

| Apr 10, 2013

The younger Cronenberg has made a derivative exercise in body horror that plays as little more than low rent Cronenberg pastiche.

| Original Score: C+ | Apr 10, 2013

The whole movie feels like a case of the sweats, putting you in desperate need of the chicken soup of recognizable human behavior.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 9, 2013

Cronenberg achieves a kind of heightened reality that does not resemble the real world but possesses its own internal logic.

| Apr 9, 2013

Antiviral never builds the sort of character investment or narrative momentum that would allow its visceral horrors to seriously disturb, rather than seeming like choice gross-out moments lovingly designed for maximum viewer recoil.

| Apr 8, 2013

Cronenberg's directing style is elegant, all shiny surfaces and sleek camera moves, until the horror begins; then the film turns as dark and as bloody as the physical decay of its star-obsessed characters.

| Apr 8, 2013

A one-joke movie--a good joke, yes, but Brandon Cronenberg's agenda clouds the clarity that's needed to fully deliver the punchline.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 7, 2013

Like his father before him, Brandon makes a virtue of budgetary restraints: Antiviral's rough textures are, in themselves, somewhat alienating.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 17, 2013

Clearly about the curse of celebrity culture but also hamfisted and confused. If you like nasties, this is very nasty indeed.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 1, 2013

Growing gradually sicker and messier along with its conflicted protagonist, Antiviral is, in all its icily unpleasant ickiness, indeed perfect somehow.

| Feb 1, 2013