D/S: Brandon Cronenberg. P: Niv Fichman. Cast: Caleb Landry Jones, Sarah Gadon, Lisa Berry, Malcolm McDowell, Douglas Smith.

Our unhealthy fascination for celebrity finds a queasily literal expression in Antiviral, the feature debut of writer-director Brandon Cronenberg (son of David): a film which splices the viral obsessions of Cronenberg père with the celebrity death-crash fantasies of Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash – and serves as a twisted companion-piece to Eckhardt Schmidt’s Der Fan (1982, aka Trance), a similarly ironic (and grisly) meditation on fame. Antiviral posits a near-future world in which our mania for celebrity has become a pathology. Protagonist Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) works at the Lucas Clinic, one of several boutique emporia hawking diseases of the rich and famous to their fans. These tragic acolytes, desperate for the illusion of intimacy with their idols, slope into the clinic to be injected with viruses once incubated in the celebs’ bodies. Want to pretend you contracted an STD from your favourite actress? If you have the cash, happiness is but a hypodermic away…

More grotesque still are the “celebrity meat” counters, where fanboys and girls queue to buy (and devour) greasily repulsive steaks grown from celebrity muscle cells; by comparison, the celebrity skin grafts sold like designer clothing – allowing the “wearer” to experience tactile sensations through the star’s own flesh – seem innocuous indeed. In this sick designer culture, fame is big business – around which has sprung up an even sicker black market, catering to fans who can’t afford official “name brand” product. Like other clinic technicians, Syd March is secretly bootlegging star viruses, stripping away their copy-protection and selling them on to his shady contacts. When media sensation Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon) contracts a mystery Chinese virus, Syd is duly dispatched by the Clinic to acquire an official sample; this he does, cannily smuggling an extra dose in his own bloodstream. But when Hannah actually dies from the disease, Syd quickly realises that her virus will become a Holy Grail for collectors. It could make his fortune – so long as it doesn’t kill him first…

There’s much to admire in Antiviral. The sundry grotesqueries are handled with some wit, as in the tabloids’ pornographic fascination for stars’ bodies (“Aria’s Anus Ordeal” screams one lascivious TV headline); the vampiric relationship between celebrities and the media is neatly observed, although the final shot (of Syd literally lapping blood from Hannah Geist’s flesh) lays it on a bit thick. The film’s visual palette is uncompromisingly stark, its clinical white gleam broken only by dove-greys, charcoals and blacks – and the occasional burst of red. The whole cast sports a ghoulish pallor, again underscoring the “universal sickness” theme; “You look like shit” one of Syd’s co-workers tells him (but then, so does everyone else). And fittingly, a film about celebrity finds room for a genuine icon: Malcolm McDowell, turning in another sleekly malevolent cameo as a virologist.

But once the basic premise has been outlined, there really isn’t anywhere for the film to go. There’s a third-act twist into conspiracy-thriller territory, true, but – indifferently handled, and confusingly resolved – it barely registers. The “viral bootlegging” theme is reflected in the film’s patchwork construction, revealing a clear pathway of infection from father to son. There are numerous nods to Videodrome, from Syd’s biomechanical nightmare-visions to the video-generated “afterlife” of dead celebrities – including, as her name signals, the ill-starred Hannah Geist, fated to live on as an interactive sex partner. To Brandon C’s credit, these don’t play like outright steals so much as filial homage: the grateful acknowledgement of a creative debt, with an implicit pledge to continue the family business. One thing Brandon does not seem to have inherited, however, is his father’s succinctness. Pruned to a brisk 80 minutes, Antiviral would have made its points more acutely; but at 108, it’s notably overlong. Still, it has originality and genuine bite – and these days, that’s something. Now, can I interest any of you in Donald Trump’s coronavirus? Ten quid and it’s yours. All right, five. Three, then – and that’s my final offer…