Film Review

Rabid (2019)

A fashion designer is left horribly disfigured in an accident and seeks out an experimental treatment with unexpected side effects…

David Cronenberg finds the term ‘Cronenbergian’ strange. When referencing his influence, people tend to fixate on Videodrome (1983) or The Fly (1986), but his work’s spanned many genres outside horror. Is Maps to the Stars (2014) or A History of Violence (2005) horror? Cronenberg is an individual fascinated by the fragility of the human form. Between Rabid (1977) and The Brood (1979), he did a movie about race-cars, Fast Company (1979). As his later Crash (1996) would delve into, vehicular accidents are an everyday source of bodily annihilation.

Only his second feature, Rabid featured many of these themes. Crash survivor Rose undergoes experimental surgery which mutates into an insatiable hunger that spreads like rabies to her victims. Jen and Sylvia Soska are twin directors who play with similar concepts. Their film American Mary (2012) dealt with surgical obsession and consensual mutilation, being just short of a Cronenberg fever dream itself, and now they further…