20 Best Science Fiction Movies Released Since 2000

Despite having just three feature films in the bank, after eighteen years in the business, Brandon Cronenberg is an important talent in science fiction filmmaking. Each of his features to date takes a sci-fi concept and twists it around a horror core, sending beleaguered and tortured protagonists into the darkest recesses of their own selves, challenging everything they’ve assumed about their own lives in the process.

Antiviral, his first work, features a cast including Caleb Landry Jones, Malcolm McDowell and Sheila McCarthy, and packs some pretty grim and surreal body horror visuals, despite being made on a budget of just CA$3.3 million (around £2,046,000). We follow Syd March (Jones), employee of the Lucas Clinic, in a future where his company and others purchase and copy viruses from celebrities and market, sell and infect willing fans with them.  

Not content with his company salary and lifestyle, Syd has a little something extra going on the side, and injects himself with viruses so he can take them home, extract them and sell them on the black market. But after shooting up with Lucas Clinic's exclusive celebrity Hannah Geist’s (Sarah Gadon) blood, he runs into a spot of bother, unable to remove the virus’ copy protection, and now against the clock to rid himself of the very strain that is killing Hannah.

Antiviral is the distillation of everything that makes Cronenberg great, and Jones gives Syd an authentic desperation that elevates this film that bit above the director’s subsequent, better publicised efforts.