Few names carry as much weight in horror as Cronenberg. For nearly half a century, Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg has cemented his name in every decade with groundbreaking genre films — from Rabid to Videodrome to Crash to even last year’s Crimes of the Future. So much so that the word ‘Cronenbergian’ has emerged as a synonym for body horror. It’s quite a legacy to live up to, though his son Brandon Cronenberg is accomplishing the impossible.
A lover of books, Brandon initially wanted to be a writer, and he claims it wasn’t until his final year of film school that he decided to pivot into film. And while his work also deals with body horror, Brandon is adding a new signature to the genre by examining identity and the complex relationship between our body to our mind. What is it that makes us ourselves? Is it the physical construction of our bodies or the intangible and singularity of our souls?
These are the questions that fuel Brandon’s body of work, a body that is quickly amassing muscle. With three horror shorts and now three features to his name, Cronenberg is beginning to find some answers for himself. His works insofar double as curious dichotomies that challenge the way we see the world, and that world is certainly one we’re heavily anticipating in returning to this Friday when Infinity Pool opens for swimming. Get tickets now!
Before we dive in, let’s wade through the waters that got us here…
Broken Tulips (2008)
Cronenberg’s first film, Broken Tulips, was completed in his final year of film school at Ryerson University. A precursor to his first feature length film Antiviral, the story follows Edward Porris (Ryan Kelly) who visits an unusual type of spa. Rather than seek treatment for an illness, Porris pays to make himself sick, purchasing an injection of a virus harvested from his favorite celebrity. Hoping to commune with her on a unique level, he opens his body up to her germs and relishes the experience of this bizarre connection. This is Cronenberg’s first foray into examining the essence of personhood as Porris believes he is purchasing a piece of a celebrity he has never met. The celebrities who offer samples of their illnesses to the clinic have no idea who will share their viruses, but they sell pieces of themselves and foster the fallacy of this intimate connection.
Cronenberg was inspired to write the script after recovering from his own bout with the flu. Not knowing who had passed him the germs, he became obsessed with the idea that he was sharing an intimate connection with a total stranger. He refined this thesis while watching an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live in which actress Sarah Michelle Gellar received wild applause when she mentioned she might accidentally pass on her cold to everyone in the audience. Experiencing the sensations of a shared illness overpowering his body, Edward imagines an interaction in which she would pass on the germs personally. But Cronenberg asks us to separate the idea of intimacy into corporeal and spiritual interactions. Does solely physical sensation allow us to truly connect with another person and can we ever truly know someone who isn’t aware that we exist?
The Camera and Christopher Merk (2010)
Cronenberg’s second film, The Camera and Christopher Merk explores another aspect of identity: the private and the public. Christopher Merk (Philip Riccio) is a young man who moves into a strange building. Rent is free, but the apartment is outfitted with cameras and every moment he is home will be broadcast live to the other tenants. Inspired by social media, Cronenberg describes the film as an exploration of the “combination of voyeurism and exhibitionism” and Christopher Merk asks us to consider where our true identity lies. Is it the version of ourselves we know or the image reflected back to us by others?
Merk is perfectly content to watch his neighbors live their lives, but they believe his agreement to live in the building comes with an obligation to entertain them as well. Cronenberg has spoken about the preconceived notions strangers have used to construct his identity based on his father’s work and perhaps this dichotomy is informing the story as well. What is it that makes us who we are? Is it the version of ourselves we feel is true or the persona we’ve cultivated for others? The story reflects a young creator entering the film industry and trying to leave behind the shadow of his father’s legacy. Can we ever escape the expectations of others? How does the trajectory of our lives change with the addition of a camera? Are we obligated to create spectacle just because others happen to be watching? And if we do, will we still be able to hold on to the essence of who we are?
Antiviral (2012)
Cronenberg’s first feature film expands the ideas presented in Broken Tulips, then takes them to their logical conclusions. Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) is a young technician who works at a clinic specializing in celebrity biology. He harvests physical samples from a roster of society’s elite then sells them to clients hoping to connect with their favorite stars. With constant access to valuable germs, Syd smuggles the viruses through his own body to sell on the black market. His obsession takes a dark turn when he injects a sample from actress Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon) shortly before she dies from a mysterious illness and must search for a cure before suffering the same fate. While Broken Tulips presents a thought provoking scenario, Antiviral explores the consequences of this unique obsession. Though he does not want to die, Syd rhapsodizes about the incredible bond of sharing a death with Hannah. He has allowed the object of his desire to have such intense control over his own body that neither of them will survive the encounter.
Antiviral further explores celebrity culture and interaction with unique offerings for the film’s obsessed clients. A virtual simulation of Hannah presents her image nude, trapped, and afraid in a coffin-shaped box. Pre-recorded footage allows her to ask for and respond to commands from the user, offering up her submissiveness in an artificial setting. Restaurants sell steaks made from the harvested cells of her body, genetically modified to continue growing and consumers may now eat theoretical pieces of her flesh. Other companies offer skin grafts created from these same cells, allowing the user to incorporate her skin into their own anatomy. The film concludes with a deceased Hannah kept in a vegetative state in a sort of biological tomb. Customers can buy a sample of her unique cells and pay to interact with a segment of skin designed to resemble an arm while gazing at her face entombed within the glass. The company sells it as her “Afterlife,” a perpetual state of being in which she has given control of her body’s sensations to paying customers.
Antiviral could be classified as body horror, but the thought-provoking film digs much further than the surface of the skin. By presenting physical touch as a sort of intimate connection, Cronenberg asks us what it is that makes us who we are. Is our identity simply a collection of cells that can be purchased and passed around to adoring fans or an intangible piece of our personalities known only to those we choose to interact with? The technology that patents the virus and keeps the proprietary germs from spreading to freeloaders also generates a facial composite of the sample itself. Though it resembles the celebrity in some way, the virus’s face is blurry and distorted, impossible to ever clearly recognize as human. It’s the essence of the body fully divorced from the mind.
The simulation of Hannah in a box will never be the real thing. It will always be based on prerecorded images and an algorithm. The skin cells may have grown from Hannah’s body, but they are not actually her. And the body of Hannah that lies in the box may be the physical makeup of the woman Syd loves, but her humanity is gone. All he actually has is a recreation, the face of the virus not of Hannah. Cronenberg has described celebrity as “a legitimate form of insanity, and it’s that point where you think you have a relationship with this person who’s never met you.” And that’s perhaps the film’s most frightening idea: is the virus Syd sells actually harvested germs or the collective insanity of celebrity?
Please Speak Continuously and Describe Your Experiences as They Come to You (2019)
Cronenberg continues this exploration of the mind with his third short film Please Speak Continuously and Describe Your Experiences as They Come to You. The 10-minute horror follows Emily (Deragh Campbell) as she undergoes a procedure that will allow her to relive and describe her dreams, accessing a consciousness most of us cannot control. Though we often remember our dreams, sleep is a time for our minds to roam freely, making impromptu connections with the synapses in our brains and spontaneously processing the events of our lives. By trying to relive this state of freedom, Cronenberg is exploring the dichotomy between the dreaming and the waking world. Who are we when we dream and does this persona match the carefully constructed idea of ourselves that we experience when we’re awake? Cronenberg notes that he conceived the short’s central idea while trying out different visual techniques with cinematographer Karim Hussain in preparation for his next film Possessor. The colorful palettes imply an altered state of consciousness and the danger in trying to exert control over the merging of our physical bodies and the intangibility of our processing mind.
Possessor (2020)
Cronenberg goes on to explore the connection between the mind and the body with his most successful film to date, Possessor. Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) is a paid assassin who uses implants in the brain to transfer her consciousness into the body of a chosen target. This allows her to get close to her intended victim and carry out the hit without putting her personhood at risk. An early scene in which her son makes a robot dance using a console from across the room is a microcosm of this unique method of murder. Jumping into the bodies of others, she physically becomes them while maintaining her own intangible identity. But this complicated connection begins to wear on Tasya’s own perceptions of reality and she begins to lose the boundaries that separate her from the body she is possessing.
The film is a complex story that asks us to examine the possibility of fundamentally changing who we are. Tasya could be interpreted as an outside force demanding fundamental change and Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott), the target who resists her possession, could be interpreted as our true state of identity often forced to conform to the needs of our environment. By comparing our cultivated personalities to viruses unknowingly implanted by our surroundings, Cronenberg presents a horrifying question: can we ever truly know ourselves? How much of our identity stems from our own choices or do our desires come from a virus implanted in our minds by those who surround us? A horrifying anecdote about germs living in cat litter presents the idea that our minds might have already been infiltrated with an artificial persona not aligned with our own sense of self. Where does our personality actually come from? Are we truly who we think we are or is our perception distorted by a virus living inside our heads?
Infinity Pool (2023)
Following this impressive streak, Cronenberg is poised to debut one of the year’s most exciting films. Infinity Pool includes an A-list cast who will embody the complex ideas about the mind and the body on which the young director has built his career. James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) is a writer who finds himself sentenced to death on an exclusive island resort. Fortunately, his extravagant wealth allows him to create a clone of himself to suffer the extreme punishment while he gets away with the crime completely. Like Tasya, James will outsource his own physical experiences by creating an alternative body connected to his persona. But can the body truly exist without the mind? When we replicate ourselves, are we not creating a copy of our consiousness as well?
Imagery for Infinity Pool features the attractive actors Skarsgård and Mia Goth, who plays a young socialite named Gabi, wearing skin-like masks that transform their beautiful faces into hideous monsters, a personification of the callous crimes they are committing against their clones. Like the distorted face of the virus in his first film, Cronenberg uses these masks to showcase the double nature lurking within us all. Though James and Gabi may be attractive, wealthy, and well put together, underneath their shining images lie heartless monsters who would sentence someone else to death for their crimes. At some point in our lives, each of us will make choices that contradict the upstanding identity we’ve created for the rest of the world. Infinity Pool will ask us to consider what we would look like if our faces reflected our actions and desires? What would others see if they could visualize the essence of our souls?
The word cronenbergian is now commonly used in horror analysis to describe the mind’s reaction to a deformation or mutation of the body, but it’s possible that the Cronenberg name will soon come to imply something else altogether. With his complex and thought provoking films, Brandon Cronenberg is building on the work of his father while venturing into more theoretical territory. His films may not offer easy answers, but they do ask us to question the assumptions we’ve created to understand who we are. The connection between the mind and the body is a centuries-old conundrum that has spurred entire branches of philosophical debate. In just a few short years, Brandon has honed a unique ability to capture this dichotomy on film, allowing us to access fundamental questions about our own identities and understand the complex personas we’ve created to interact with the rest of the world.
Infinity Pool opens Friday, January 27th via Neon. Get tickets now!
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