In A Mirror, Darkly: The Soska Sisters' RABID (2019)

Laura Vandervoort as Rose in the Soska Sisters' RABID.

The Soska Sisters’ new version of RABID - which premiered in late August at the London FrightFest Film Festival and is presently available only on a Region B Blu-ray disc from 101 Films - is only a remake of David Cronenberg’s 1977 film in the general and tributary sense. Surprisingly, the screenplay card itself (which implies a Jen and Sylvia rewrite of a script by story generator John Serge) doesn’t mention the original creator; this information is kept separate, as an introductory credit shown just before the film presents its first (impressively recreated) image as a picture on a commercial billboard. From there, with the exception of some names (and a lot of name-dropping), it pretty much steers its own course.

Said course is often a very jagged line between satire and tragedy - or “schadenfreude,” to use the word it applies to the bizarre, flamboyant fashion designs of its heroine, assistant dressmaker Rose Miller (Laura Vandervoort). Instantly conveyed as a modern-day incel klutz - wearing battle scars, a broken nose and glasses even before she gets into the first of two motorcycle accidents we see - and vegan sensitive ("I just don't like to hurt anything"), Rose explains her professional passion by likening haute couture to armor, something it's necessary for people like her to wear before they step out into the dog-eat-dog world, if they want to feel safe, confident, and empowered.

"Why do we keep remaking old trends?" These disarming, introductory words, are addressed to us by Rose's boss, fashion maven Günter (Mackenzie Gray), at the outset in voice-over as we see Rose arriving typically late for work, stepping off an escalator and forcing her feet back into a pair of unbearably severe high-heeled shoes. "How are we breathing new life and soul?," he continues. "Are we adding something new? If there is no soul, there cannot be life. So, do we cater to the masses, or do we create art, only for the few who dare experience it?"

Well, those are the questions, aren't they?

Unlike Cronenberg's own film, and his work in general, which grapple with philosophical questions about the responsibility of art and science and whether it is possible to entwine the logic of science and the imagination of art, the Soska version is about appearances. Rose quickly loses what little outward appearance she has (or believes she has) in a motorcycle accident brought about by a fit of wounded vanity, which ruins the lower portion of her face. Her wired jaw forces her to take liquid nourishment from a large plastic syringe that looks more or less like Marilyn Chambers' underarm appendage in the original, until a surprise email qualifies her as a test subject for a stem cell regeneration procedure at the Burroughs Clinic, under the supervision of - you guessed it - Dr. William Burroughs (Ted Atherton), whose waiting room is adorned with Francis Bacon-like art that would send any reasonable patient running. Almost as quickly as her face was ruined - and revealed to her in a scene of appalling medical cruelty by the attending Dr. Keloid (Stephen McHattie, who seems to mispronounce his own name), before making the point "I strongly recommend staying away from mirrors right now" - she is almost as quickly reconstituted and rejuvenated into a Cinderella fantasy of herself. She's even able to throw away with her ugly-bug glasses. Suddenly beautiful and always hungry, she experiences a fit of breakthrough creativity and designs Günter's new spring line almost single-handedly... but with all this new beauty, talent and confidence comes a new daily regimen: a "super-protein" beverage called Red and other medication labelled "May Induce Paranoia - May Cause Vivid HALLUCINATIONS." (No pain, no gain - right?)

This is not quite the film most people might expect going in; it lacks the original’s essential humanity and has no particular underlying philosophy about the ideas (or at least the name checks) it engages. Though the film is titled RABID, it spends surprisingly little time on the city-wide rabies outbreak that results from Rose's "Patient Zero" interactions with the general public. Certainly this was likely imposed on the film by budgetary constraints, but Cronenberg had the same problem and somehow managed. It was a conscious decision on the Soskas' part to keep Rose in focus at all times, while Cronenberg aspired to give his tragic heroine a distance and anonymity from the horror she spawned, which eventually spread far enough to return to her.

Mind you, this new RABID is the product of very different Canadians and a very different Canada. Cronenberg made his film in a simpler and cozier world, at a time when many Canadians didn't even bother locking their doors at night. Here, the societal impact of Rose’s skyrocketing narcissism is given barely a glance in the scheme of things, because the focus is always on Rose, her troubled dating life, her groveling professional servitude, and her shallow, obnoxious model friend Chelsea (Hanneke Talbot), whose every line of dialogue describes someone playing to an imaginary laugh track. It’s telling that the epidemic is first spread to a daytime soap actor (Stephen Huszar) in a swimming pool labelled "Shallow Water - Do Not Dive" and when it finally explodes, it's on the set of the telenovela as the hunky star's coked-up director tries to get the entire murderous outburst on film as "a witness to [his] truth." 

Do we laugh? Do we scream? Do we change the channel?

The bloody bacchanal (which includes a non sequitur appearance of a department store Santa Claus, à la Cronenberg's original) builds to a climactic runway show that goes similarly haywire - so, in a sense, the impact we are made to feel from the rabies epidemic is likened to interruptions of programming, interspersed with supposedly real life scenes that feel awfully like scenes from a random cop or hospital show. As Rose's tragic transformation continues to evolve, Vandervoort's well-developed, empathic performance is countered as the horror aspect veer well outside of Cronenberg into John Carpenter territory and then further on toward Frank Henenlotter-ville. In all fairness, some of this special effects material appears to have been wisely cut back in the editing, but its final port is even crazier - showing the influence of Luca Guadagnino's SUSPIRIA (2018), which can also be seen in Rose's impressively hellish dress designs. Perhaps we might do well to remember those warning labels on Rose's medication, but the film does nothing to clarify how much, or indeed if any, of the film is subjective.

The Soskas' goal here appears to have been to touch on as much of Cronenberg's work as possible in the context of a single story, which does honor to the hero but amounts to a series of knowing distractions from the story at hand and the absence of a more substantial there there. The swimming pool seduction and photos of Dr. Burroughs' late wife (images of actress Lynn Loring) invoke SHIVERS; the pharmacological side-effects and a climactic suicide invoke VIDEODROME (as does Vandervoort's resemblance to Deborah Harry, and the fact that one fellow addresses her as "Blondie"); the Burroughs references invoke NAKED LUNCH; Rose appears to be "always crashing in the same car" (to borrow a line from David Bowie); Rose's fashion line might better be described as "the shape of rage" (an important phrase from THE BROOD) rather than as "schadenfreude"; and the crimson surgical mantles of DEAD RINGERS are standard dress code at the Burroughs Clinic (where original cast member Heidi Van Palleske makes a cameo). It's reasonably well integrated but the constant reminders of how clever the references are serve no constructive purpose and continually take us out of the film's presumed reality.

SPOILER (please skip this paragraph if you haven't seen the film): In the film's defense, it played more richly on my second viewing, when the meaning of its odd coda struck home for me. With VIDEODROME, we never really learn if Max Renn's final suicidal act frees him or ties him into the loop of the film itself (which is suggested by the way the film opens), but in this film, Rose - after going through similar motions - definitely does survive, apparently made immortal by her stem cell-engineered armoring. Even so, there is a scary implication that nothing of the original Rose survives, that what is left to live and breathe and roar with outrage is just the surface, just the armor, just her appearance. She's hammering with her fists against unbreakable glass so something of Rose may remain, or believe it remains, but like the reinvented tenants of the Skyliner high-rise apartments in SHIVERS, she's ready to meet the amok, hostile, incessantly bitchy world we've made for ourselves. There are also some visual evocations of the Soskas' prior success AMERICAN MARY peppered throughout.   

Despite its problems, the implications of this finale raise this tossed salad above the usual formulaic remake, as do a number of outstanding lead performances - Vandervoort, Atherton, and also Mackenzie Gray as Günter, the Keith Richards-wigged, reptilian-looking figurehead of the fashion salon, who looks less like a real person than some wizened kimonoed totem that Screamin’ Jay Hawkins might rattle in your face; these are all characters and performances I think Cronenberg himself would have been pleased to direct. Co-producers/directors/writers Jen and Sylvia Soska, the film's only twins, appear briefly as two snide and naughty disco flakes - named Bev and Elly in the end scroll, a wink at DEAD RINGERS. They seem to be having a good time in fantasy land, but if this story is any indication, internal pressure is building. Time will tell if they can move past their preoccupation with make-up, dress-up, and appearance and trust their audience by telling a story that really drops their armor.

It was announced yesterday that the Soska's RABID will make its US home video debut in December from Shout!/Scream Factory. It will also open in select theaters and on VOD platforms on December, Friday the 13th.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.