HORROR HOMAGE
If a Cronenberg film is going to be remade, it might as well be by a pair of Canadians
You know you’re in a Canadian horror movie when you wake up after a road accident and your doctor is Stephen Mchattie. The gaunt, scary-looking Nova Scotian plays Dr. Keloid in Rabid, a crafty remake of the early David Cronenberg film that helped cement him as one of the originators of body horror.
Alas, fashion designer Rose Miller (Laura Vandervoort) is no student of the genre, or she’d realize much earlier what trouble she’s in. Her boss Gunter (Mackenzie Gray) is clearly more aware, however. His first line is ostensibly about the fashion industry but we know better: “Why do we keep remaking old trends?” So, why remake a 43-year-old Cronenberg flick? For co-writers, co-directors and identical twins Jen and Sylvia Soska, the answer is clear: Update the story with a new twist ending, a greater female sensibility and the best special effects the 21st century can provide.
Rose looks gruesome after her motorcycle crash, her jaw wired shut and the bone clearly visible through torn skin. Dr. Keloid — look up the word and you’ll find a sly medical pun carried over from the original — suggests a radical surgery, which restores Rose’s good looks. She doesn’t even need glasses any more!
Alas, the procedure has some nasty side-effects. Rose is given a thick red “super-protein” elixir to help with nausea, but no matter how much she drinks, she’s always hungry for something else red and thick and sticky. No, not Cabernet Sauvignon.
The mostly Canadian cast includes Hanneke Talbot as Rose’s best friend and a model for Gunter’s new line of clothing, amusingly called Schadenfreude.
Benjamin Hollingsworth plays Brad, another colleague whose interest in Rose may be romantic or possibly clinical; he seems to know more about her condition than she does.
The new Rabid walks a fine line between drama and camp. I was rolling my eyes at a hospital scene that featured a Halloween-grade
nurse’s uniform and acting to match, until I realized that it wasn’t trying to take itself seriously. But the film gets an accidental shot of relevance when people around Rose start exhibiting rabies-like symptoms and have to be quarantined; this as real Canadians are warily watching the outbreak of coronavirus.
Even without this weird synchronicity, the Soska sisters have made a clever homage to early Cronenberg that should find a modern following. And if anyone’s going to remake classic Cancon, it feels right that it’s other Canadians behind and in front of the camera.