Sydney Sweeney's Bizarre New Soap Makes An Underrated Horror Movie Terrifyingly Plausible
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What would you do to get a closer connection with your favorite movie starMaybe you'd buy an iPhone and compose a shot like Martin Scorsese. Or maybe you'd buy a BMW and race it like Arnold Schwarzenegger. But maybe that's not good enough for you. Maybe you want something a little more ... intimate. Well, whether you asked for it or not, Sydney Sweeney has got you covered.
Sweeney has partnered with the "manly" soap company Dr. Squatch (what makes a soap "manly," we'll never know) for a sultry ad that has racked up over 1.7 million likes on Instagram in which the blonde actress/producer speaks directly into the camera from inside a bathtub. According to Dr. Squatch, fans "kept asking about Sydney's Sweeney's bathwater" and now they can get inside the bathtub with Sydney, in the loosest possible definition of those words, thanks to the release of "Sydney's Bathwater Bliss."
The limited-edition soap is made with Sydney's actual bathwater, and for just $8, it can be yours when the soap drops on June 6. This viral stunt has some feeling déjà vu regarding the time internet model Belle Delphine sold her "gamer bathwater" for a profit of $90k, but there's another even more disturbing comparison that suggests a future where our attachment to celebrities is even more grotesque.
Brandon Cronenberg's Antiviral shows the consequences of getting too close to your favorite celebs
Following in his father David Cronenberg's footsteps, Brandon Cronenberg's "Antiviral" takes place in a world where fan culture has become so depraved that you can buy viruses and other pathogens from celebrities after they fall ill and inject them into your body so that you can have the same cold or flu as your favorite movie star.
Released in 2012, long before a global pandemic made us all experts on viruses, the film is easily one of the most disturbing movies of the century (so far). It is now also frighteningly prescient because of how the film looks ahead to where our increasingly rabid celebrity culture is headed, with fans demanding to get closer and closer to their chosen idol. It's no longer good enough to wear the same clothes or cut your hair in the same style. With this Sydney Sweeney soap, we're now inching closer to the parasocial hell of "Antiviral."
Cronenberg called the gore and body horror of the movie "therapeutic" because of how it allowed him to express all his anxieties about the world within the satire of the film, but who knows how much longer this repulsive movie will remain a work of fiction. So if you ever see "Sydney's Fabulous Flu" on sale for all the "dirty little boys," just know that "Antiviral" did it first.