Speaking of which, there are indeed many good movies in the world, but there are also many bad movies. However, between good films and bad films, there is always a special existence. Generally speaking, such films are not worthy of being included in the classic film list in terms of plot, mirroring, or narrative style. It's a good movie, but it is unforgettable because of some very distinctive flash points, and I even want to turn it out and savor it from time to time. Turned out the sword is very evil. The word-of-mouth of such films is often very polarized. People who like it strongly recommend it, and they dare to slap their chest to ensure that they will definitely not lose money. People who don't like it are the exact opposite. With a swipe of the pen, he directly entered the cold palace. Although there is no strict and unified standard answer for good and bad films, this type of relatively special film may have to be classified into a category limited to personal tastes. But whether it is good or bad, at least I have seen it, and the final impression can be said by itself.
The movie "Virus Antibodies" is such a special existence. On the whole, it is definitely not the kind of movie with high ratings, but if it is completely classified as a bad movie, I often feel unbearable. Since then, this film has become a part of the personal collection of tastes in my personal film list, and I can't help but want to find it out and watch it again when I have time after a year and a half.
"Virus Antibodies" is a film directed by Brandon Cronenberg. When mentioning Brandon Cronenberg, we have to mention his father David Cronenberg. The famous eccentric director is known for his biological Horror (also known as Fear of Body Mutation/Organism Horror) is famous in the film industry, and films such as "Murder on Video", "Naked Lunch", "Desire Express" are all his works. His son, Brandon Cronenberg, clearly inherited his father's style, focusing the lens on the unknown possibilities of human tissue and the infinite fear of its own vulnerability, supplemented by decay, decay, fragmentation, reconstruction. As well as special theme elements such as dislocation and handover, a pot of scarlet boiling re-creation is made. As for the perception, as the so-called honey of A and arsenic of B, the audience still has to visit in person.
"Virus Antibody" is a sci-fi thriller. Under the shell of the future technological world view is the inside of a cult cult niche film. It is about a generation in which the fanatical star chasing is gradually becoming white-hot. Fans are chasing idols to the point where they are almost crazy. Ordinary collections and distanced contact through media such as the screen can no longer meet the increasing needs of fans. People are chasing idols related to stars. All things in Lianhe, even star cell artificial meat needs to queue up all night to buy it. Therefore, Lucas, which mainly sells star viruses, came into being. The company sells various star viruses. After purchasing, fans can infect the same type of virus as the star through intramuscular injection, so as to satisfy their zero-distance contact with the star. Sick fanaticism. The protagonist, Sid, is a salesman of Lucas Corporation. He quietly injected himself with the star virus by virtue of his position, thereby carrying the virus out and reselling it in the form of blood draws. Until one day, the popular female star Hannah suddenly fell ill and died, and Sid, who intended to resell the Hannah virus, was also infected with the same deadly virus. During his life and death struggle, all forces also intervened in the matter, which led to the gradual development of the situation. An increasingly unexpected ending.
Compared with the popular commercial themes, sci-fi movies tend to be unpopular, but fortunately, sci-fi movies cover a wide range, and they can often play at different levels under the lens of different directors. "Virus Antibody" starts with a close-to-real world view and starts first. This setting is actually very subtle. Using scenes close to reality to narrate can often place sci-fi conflicts inadvertently, listen to thunder in silent places, and maximize the effect of horror and horror The reason is very simple. The future horror stories that take place in the most ordinary supermarkets, parks, and office buildings must be more impactful than the future horror events that take place on unreachable and unknown fictional aliens. But at the same time, this setting also has the disadvantage of weakening the sci-fi background. The single scene is bound to need a strong plot to show its strength, otherwise it will face the embarrassing situation that the plot can't support the length of time. "Virus Antibody" is obviously not exempt from the custom. It takes the lead at the beginning but also exposes the weaknesses of the plot. The procrastination of the shots and the narrative shows a somewhat weak literary and artistic situation. The laying of redundant shots does not strengthen the conflict. Instead, the overall rhythm appears more diffuse. The large sections of close-up silent shots obviously test the audience's concentration and patience. The exposure of these shortcomings makes the whole film really not a good film worthy of appreciation.
But from the perspective of personal style and aesthetic composition, this movie can completely break away from the ranks of bad movies. First of all, the choice of color tone is very amazing. As Sid travels between home and company, the white color of these two environments quickly creates a cold futuristic sense, amplifying the fear of unfamiliar separation between people, and then on the white walls , refrigerator, sheets, quilts, shirts and other items are repeatedly ejected, constantly rendering a sense of obsessive-compulsive disorder and the discomfort caused by perfect cleaning. At the same time, there is a huge visual difference between the cold-colored set and the blond and red-lipped beauty star posters that constantly appear in the background as advertisements. In addition, the infection and festering caused by the virus and the separation and expansion of the physical texture are continuously enlarged as the narrative progresses. At a shocking level, it showed a flesh-colored sticky connection and gray shadow. Finally, with the outbreak of the virus, it was released into a flashing bloody scene, and a large piece of salty scarlet liquid flowed into the ocean, forming the ultimate contrast with the pure white environment. The extremely clean white and the sticky dripping red are mixed together to achieve a terrifying conflict. Under these wanton shots, the pure and dirty coexist, even so real that it makes people feel sick to the stomach and slightly uncomfortable. Nausea.
The second is the selection of prop accessories and close-up shots, syringes, test tubes, blood collection instruments, huge rubber tubes, metal mouth plugs, petri dishes for cultivating star human cells, new instruments that can display the distorted virtual form of the virus on the human face... All kinds of props exude a cold and weird atmosphere, showing the tone of sci-fi horror. The flowers slowly stroked by fingers in white rubber gloves in slow motion, the dried blood stains magnified on the trembling lips, the trembling eyelashes and the dead leaves rolled up under the wheels of the speeding cars together constitute the composition. The decadent and mysterious background, along with the disturbing shaking shots and the bright and dim lights in the bloody scene, are laid out into a chilling picture scroll, which brings the aesthetics of disgust to the extreme.
The soundtrack that flashes from time to time also dutifully acts as the thruster of the thriller plot. The weird monophonic melody like metal scratches creates a dull and depressing horror atmosphere with the slow progress of slow motion, which is really the finishing touch. .
In addition, the casting is definitely an important reason why this film is worth watching. It is not an exaggeration to say that the starring Caleb Landry Jones (abbreviated as CLJ, the same below) alone supported a play. CLJ's other films, the red-haired little monster from Texas, who became famous for his role in "X-Men", has contributed in films such as "Three Billboards", "Get Out", "Blood on Byzantium" and more A very wonderful performance.
CLJ is a very interesting actor, the old-school guy who loves to watch movies alone, one of his favorite books is Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, the old-school guy who insists on an old flip phone whose carrier is about to go out of service The dead house with an amazing amount of reading (this made me not help wondering when he starred in Jiamusu's new film "The Dead Don't Die" not long ago, and wondered whether the film lover of the dead house he played was his true character), He always loves to play some miserable and unpleasant fringe characters in some strange niche independent films. He always behaves smart, willful, straightforward and humorous in interviews. "I like to work hard, and I am good at doing nothing." The tattooed big boy with freckles and his own band, Robert Jones, I've bought one of their albums (and seems to be the only one they've ever released) where CLJ sings some songs with a husky voice. The elusive and sad song has a latent paranoid temperament and innate rambling. In the early days of short hair, he looked like a cute boy who didn't grow up with a little baby fat. When he had long hair for a long time, he was very amazing. He had a very beautiful gloomy feeling, mysterious and cold, and sometimes the hair would stick to his face. He speaks and breathes lightly, and when he speaks, his hoarse voice will take on a stagnant air tone. During interviews, he often shrinks himself into a ball in a chair like he feels insecure, in a state of withdrawing. Respond to sharp or playful questions with a reserved smile.
This kind of skin is suitable for both weird and thrilling Gothic novels, but also suitable for romantic adventure stories. Bizarre possibilities were foreseen in him. The director of "Virus Antibodies" managed to grasp this not-so-mainstream temperament well and chose CLJ as the protagonist of the film. It's not an exaggeration to say that CLJ supported the whole film alone. It's not an exaggeration to say that this film is CLJ's personal show. After all, a lot of shots were spent on him, and even close-ups that lasted for dozens of seconds appeared frequently. stagnant. CLJ also contributed unforgettable styling and acting skills to this film, with a white shirt and a slim black suit, blond hair tied in a small braid at the back of his head, a few curly hair on his forehead hanging down his forehead, and exposed skin showing through. Sickly pale, coupled with gloomy and indifferent eyes, the whole person presents a fragile slenderness. The employee Sid, who used himself as a carrier to smuggle the star virus, became a grotesque and frightening human-shaped petri dish. As the virus continued to erode, it gradually cracked and shattered, and stumbled amid the drowsy high fever and persistent headache, like A smashed plaster statue kept making an inaudible crunch from the inside out, and finally turned the originally spotless self into a dirty and muddy puddle of blood in the vomited pool. Every shot is beautiful, as beautiful as a work of art destined to be sacrificed to tragedy. In order to perform this feeling of being on the verge of collapse when he fell ill, CLJ said in a behind-the-scenes interview that he hid ice cubes in his shirt, and his whole body was frozen to the point of fainting. Very impactful. People are almost fascinated by this decadent beauty that is broken at any time.
Finally, back to the theme of the movie, the deformed mouth, the long metal tube growing out of the skin of the arm, the spine bulging backward and breaking the shirt, etc.; The muscles and blood regenerated from the body's tissues... The director obviously inherited these elements that his father used to do. Humans' fear of aging, disease and even death has spawned parasitism and mutation, transformation and reorganization. The resulting monster is bound to form an anti-moral attitude. Double shock with ethics.
The extreme of alienation often leads to human beings' fear of their own existence.
There is such an old paradox called the Ship of Theseus, which talks about a similar problem: if the pieces of wood on the ship of Theseus are replaced one by one, until eventually all the wood is no longer the original wood, then the Is the ship still the original ship? This paradox of changing identities has been prompting people to think deeper throughout the ages: that is, if an object has been replaced in its entirety, is it still the same object?
Perhaps the sci-fi idea of the movie is based on this real event, which is the HeLa cell line. Medical scientists took a tissue sample from cervical cancer tumor cells from a woman named HeLa and placed it in a petri dish. The woman died six months later, but the HeLa cell line became an immortal cell. As long as appropriate cultivation conditions are given, it can multiply endlessly, and this cell line is said to be continuously replicated and used for scientific research. This will inevitably lead to ethical and moral disputes similar to the ship of Theseus. If the owner of the cell has passed away, but the cell is still alive, then is the human being as the original owner of the cell dead or still alive? Is such a move based on technological development justified? At the end of the film, the dead female star has become a petri dish of cells, and the biological company still displays her as a commodity, intending to continue to earn money from the fanatical admirers by cultivating new blood and flesh.
Another major theme of this film, the morbid fanatical star chasing, also has in-depth value for discussion. With the continuous development of the entertainment industry, star chasing behavior has also become more complex and uncontrollable. Fanatic fans such as illegitimate fans often do A shocking frenzy in an attempt to get close to his beloved star. This kind of paranoid and crazy love inevitably makes people worry, and they worry that it will eventually develop to the point in the film: people line up overnight to buy star cell artificial meat, and the price of the star cell artificial meat is clearly marked in the butcher shop; A frown and a smile are no longer enough to satisfy the urgent emotional needs of admirers. People are eager to take one step further, turning stars into their own private collections, not hesitate to infect the same virus, or even sip each other's blood and flesh...
Rilke once wrote, "Beauty is nothing else but the beginning of the horror we just can bear." Just as the film can make us feel the shudder of clean and dirty at the same time, we can also be immersed in Feel the boundless horror in the annihilation enjoyment brought by beauty. Love and death, beauty and terror, have always been equally terrifying things. It's a pity that a smart and stupid creature like humans always thinks about licking honey with a knife, knowing that they are on the bank of Baizhang cliffs, and before the poison pierces the intestines with their tongues, they are always willing and willing.
(*The picture is self-cut and self-adjusted)
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