Rabid

Critics' reactions really shaped how the 2019 'Rabid' landed — and I found that fascinating as both a fan of the original and someone who follows horror festivals closely.

Early festival write-ups and genre outlets framed the Soska sisters' remake as a deliberate update of Cronenberg's body-horror tone, and that framing pushed the filmmakers to make choices that would either lean into or push back against expectations. Reviews kept circling themes like bodily autonomy, the voyeuristic gaze, and how infection functions as social commentary; because critics kept highlighting those angles, the marketing emphasized Rose's (Laura Vandervoort's) psychological journey more than just the shock value, and interviews with the directors leaned into the feminist readings that reviewers praised.

On a practical level, the press buzz affected distribution and edits. Positive write-ups from places like Fangoria and Bloody Disgusting generated festival momentum that helped secure VOD windows, while mainstream reviews compared it to 'Rabid' (1977) and forced a dialogue about homage versus reinvention. That conversation nudged the Soskas to retain practical gore effects and tighten character beats, which reviewers kept praising in later screenings. For me, watching how reviews pushed the remake from a straight-up gore reboot into something more reflective was oddly satisfying — it felt like the critics and creators were in a messy, creative conversation, and the final film wore that discussion on its sleeve.

Weirdly, the title 'Rabid' works on so many levels that you can feel the inspirations layering up the moment you watch it. For the original 1977 film, David Cronenberg was working right in his body-horror groove: he’d already explored parasitic invasion and social breakdown in 'Shivers', and with 'Rabid' he pushed the image of an infected body as a vector for social collapse. The literal disease imagery — the idea of a wound or altered anatomy becoming contagious — taps into old horror tropes like rabies, vampirism, and urban panic, but Cronenberg reframed them around sexuality, medical experimentation, and the fear of losing control of your own flesh.

He drew from genre touchstones (invasion and contagion narratives) and the 1970s cultural anxieties about medicine, sexual liberation, and institutional trust. The film’s low-budget, transgressive tone also nodded to exploitation cinema, which let Cronenberg mix clinical dread with sleazy, feverish shock. That blend — clinical procedure plus taboo desire — became a signature and is clearly the wellsprings of the original's inspiration.

When the Soska sisters remade 'Rabid' in 2019, they were reading those same themes through a modern lens. They kept the central idea of an infected body that spreads something uncontrollable, but recast it into contemporary fears: cosmetic medicine, biotech overreach, the pill culture, and even how social contagion spreads online. Their film borrows Cronenberg's body-horror DNA while amplifying present-day anxieties about pharmaceuticals, consent, and public health. Watching both back-to-back shows how a single premise can reflect the medical and moral panic of two very different eras — and I love how both versions bite differently at the same nerve.