It Comes At Night (2017)

Maybe there is something in the air, but there seems to be no shortage apocalyptic films and TV shows. The trailer for It Comes At Night seems to be selling it as a cross between The Shining and 28 Days Later, but in reality, it is a low key, claustrophobic and highly disturbing look at ordinary people crumbling under extraordinary circumstances.

As a deadly and highly contagious disease has lays waste to the outside world, Paul, his wife Sarah, and their teenage son Travis lock themselves away in their country home. When a stranger breaks into the house, they grudgingly let him and his wife and new born baby stay with them. But have they let also in something more than just the people?

The three leads are thoroughly convincing, both individually and as a family, with Joel Edgerton giving Paul a grim, ruthlessly practical intensity. Kelvin Harrison Jr. excels as Travis, a teenager having to grow up fast and having to see things nobody should have to see.

Director Trey Edward Shults builds an oppressive world, and slowly ramps up the paranoia and tension. Much of the action takes place in the family home, but even when they venture further afield the forest they live in becomes an overbearing oppressive place, where we rarely see the sky or much of the world beyond the woods. In fact, few clues are given to the cause or nature of the outbreak, and the only backstory we get about Paul and his family comes from brief shots of family photos on the walls of their home, a throwback to happier days. That so much is left unexplained does not hinder the film as the focus is on the here and now, rather than how they or the wider world got to where they are.

Brian McOmber's soundtrack is a perfect accompaniment, an unsettling mix of synths, strings, and relentless percussion, which blends well with the heightened sound design.

If anything, It Comes At Night might be a victim of its own success, at least when it comes to recommending it. There is no let up from the grim fight for survival, and even as the characters trying to keep and air of normality and civilisation, there is a feeling that this is only staving off the inevitable, and the thought of the teenager and the baby having to grow up in this world is tragic. This is an intense and brilliantly executed piece of work, but don't expect to come through it feeling good about the world.

Antiviral (2012)

The feature length debut from writer/director Brandon Cronenberg, Antiviral is a cold, creepy mix of satire and body horror, set in a world where people do not just want to get under the skin of celebrities, they want to get the celebrities under their skin.
 
Caleb Landry Jones plays Syd March, a worker at a clinic that takes live viruses from ill celebrities and sells them to obsessed fans. He also has a lucrative sideline selling pirate samples, smuggling them out in his own body. When Syd becomes infected with a disease that kills super star Hannah Geist, he must solve the mystery surrounding her death before he succumbs next.

Brandon Cronenberg is the son of "body horror" pioneer David, so comparisons are inevitable and perhaps unavoidable, but given the subject matter and the execution, these would arise anyway, no matter who was behind the camera. Some of the tropes, such as the morally dubious corporation, body modification, and the lone man getting into a situation way out of his depth, will be familiar from earlier films of Cronenberg Sr., such as Videodrome and Shivers (as well as from the writings of William Burroughs, a big influence on David). In addition, like those films, the story moves at a slow, deliberate pace, with the emphasis is on the exploration of ideas rather than characters, or heavy handed moralising.
 
However, Antiviral is by no means a slavish copy of any of these, with a style and contemporary look of its own, which contrasts with the grungy feel and slightly lurid, exploitation movie trappings of a film like Shivers. The sleek white offices of the Lucas Clinic, with smiling receptionists and plasma screen TVs pumping out a constant information dense stream of news, feel like the headquarters of any large corporation anywhere in the world today, while the recognisable contemporary urban landscapes help root the more outrageous ideas in reality.

There are also some recurring motifs in the camerawork, especially the handheld, over the shoulder shot, which crops up repeatedly, and made me think of a paparazzi stalking it’s prey.

The piracy storyline gives the film a very contemporary feel, but also with an outrageous twist, that sees the pirated cells used by a delicatessen to create the ultimate in celebrity tie-in merchandise. Special mention must also go to the soundtrack by E.C. Woodley, a mix of glacial cold glacial strings and throbbing synths.
 
The lack of sympathetic, fully rounded characters and the detached, intellectual approach to the subject matter will mean Antiviral is not for everyone, but it is a fascinating debut, and leaves me intrigued as to where Cronenberg will go next with his career.