"I MUST not know enough about the flesh. I’m going to have to learn,” says Brundle, a scientist, in David Cronenberg’s classic 1986 horror film "The Fly". His curiosity leads to a disastrous experiment that splices his body with that of an insect. Mr Cronenberg, whose other films include "Shivers" (1975), about a man-made parasite that induces uncontrollable lust, has helped pioneer a cinematic genre obsessed with the destructive potential of the body.

Brundle, it seems, was not the only one doing some learning. "Antiviral", the debut feature from Mr Cronenberg’s 32-year-old son Brandon, is equally concerned with the horrors of the flesh. Set in a bleak near-future, it depicts a time when the celebrity-obsessed pay to be injected with the maladies of their idols, from cold sores to the flu, and eat steaks synthetically grown using celebrity cells.

Dystopias are invariably a reflection of the paranoias du jour, and this is no exception. "Antiviral" considers the commodification of the body and the insidiousness of greed. The companies that harvest and sell the diseases, such as the Lucas Clinic, may battle relentlessly for contracts with the stars, but it is the most avaricious of their employees, including Syd March (played by the chillingly excellent Caleb Landry Jones), who risk their own health to inject themselves so that they can sneak viruses off campus to sell them on the black market. Are they just salesmen, the film asks, or zealots themselves?

When Syd unwittingly catches a fatal virus intended to murder the clinic’s hottest property Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon), the plot takes an odd turn, morphing into a thriller in a way that does not quite work. The look and feel of the film cannot be faulted; everything in Syd’s world, from the clinic to his home, is white and sterile, a blank canvas waiting to be infected. The result, perhaps inevitably, is a piece that is rather too cold to involve its audience. We have no one to root for. In a world such as this does it matter who lives or dies? As a piece of entertainment, "Antiviral" is oddly passionless.

But in many way this is the next logical step in a rich dystopian cinematic tradition. While once we were afraid of industrialisation ("Metropolis") or political totalitarianism ("1984"), now many films about the future tackle the perils of science, both medical and technological. The big-screen adaptation of David Mitchell's best-selling novel "Cloud Atlas", in which a robotic slave in a dark urban future rebels against her serfdom, is just the latest work to express concern about sentient machines.  "I, Robot", "2001: Space Odyssey", "The Terminator", "The Matrix" and of course "Frankenstein", share the same unease about the consequences of playing God.

Like his father, Brandon Cronenberg is concerned with the destructive potential of technological advances when they are combined with human desires. Yet the elder Cronenberg has seemed more interested in carnal instincts, whereas the younger appears preoccupied with more cerebral human needs. In "Antiviral" it is Syd's mind, riddled with a hunger for fame and aided by science, that is destroying his body, not the other way around.

"Antiviral", flawed though it may be, is a very modern dystopia, an eerie reflection of the present. It feels closer to reality than any of his father’s classics. And it is all the more difficult to watch as a result.

"Antiviral" is released in Britain on February 1st. An American release date is yet to be announced.