Antiviral (2012)

I was going to watch a Golden Globe nominee from a few years ago called Carnage but I couldn't finish it.  I gave it an hour, realized it was a sunk cost fallacy and there was nothing that could possibly happen in the final 30 minutes that would make it have been worth the time so I cut my losses and moved on.  If you're curious, it's streaming for free through Amazon's IMDb channel.  Cannot recommend but also can't do a full post because I DNF'd it.  So here's a completely different movie.    It's not October yet but it's never the wrong season for a horror movie.  This has been in my queue probably since 2012 but it kind of fell off my radar because it never gets mentioned on any of the movie sites I frequent.  And it should be talked about.  This is what A Cure for Wellness should have been, plus added commentary on celebrity culture.

Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) works for the prestigious Lucas Clinic, specializing in selling diseases contracted by celebrities to their fans.  Favorite pop star gets chlamydia?  You can too!  It'll be just like you slept with them yourself!  On the side, however, Syd smuggles samples out in his own body, hosting the disease until it can be extracted and sold on the black market.  It seems to work until his company's biggest star, Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon), dies from a genetically engineered virus.  Now Syd has to figure out who assassinated Hannah so he can save himself from falling to the same fate.

If you have a phobia of medical procedures, blood, germs, or disease, this movie is going to fuck with you so hard.  If you don't, it's pretty tame.  Jones puts in some work as Syd goes through the courses of the disease, while veteran Malcolm McDowell shows up just long enough to be weird.

The best part of the movie is just how dystopian and cynical it is.  Past the body horror, the fixation on celebrity, youth, and beauty is front and center of the whole movie.  It's beautifully dark.

This is streaming on Hulu and you should definitely watch it, especially right before you have a doctor's appointment.  Or buy meat.