Writer and director Barak Shpiez brings rumours, controversies and conspiracies to the screen with his thriller Vax.
The temporality of the film is set through a news report detailed the goings on in 2003. President Bush, potential war, the continued search to prevent one of the world’s biggest killers – malaria. This final segment is the focus of the narrative. The search for a malaria vaccine.
Working late one night in the lab, Geoff discovers an anomaly in the research. A petri dish standing out from the rest of the sample. As there is no independent variable, there should theoretically be no difference between this petri dish and the others in the sample. Something has halted the development of the malaria in a way that hasn’t been recorded before. Geoff takes this to his superior, Eric. They are baffled, but both reluctantly come to the same conclusion. This could be the foundation of a vaccine. Have they accidentally stumbled across the answer?
It’s not unheard of for answers scientific developments to be made by accident, as was the case with penicillin. But although Fleming discovered what would eventually become the antibiotic, Penicillin, it took 20 years for the drug to be manufactured into a useable form. A similar task now faces Geoff and Eric. They must first work out what caused the anomalous petri dish, isolate this and then find a way to work it into a vaccine.
But the centre of Vax is more about the companies that fund research and how their drive for profit is detrimental the causes they are supposed to support. After his conversation with Eric, Geoff becomes concerned. He discusses the sample with his girlfriend, Rachel (Marguerite Wheatley), and the implications of the discovery. He realises he will be a footnote at the bottom of the paper, with little financial reward. On top of that, the threat of what Eric might or might not do with the sample is worrying him.
Geoff heads back to the lab to take a swab of the sample just to be safe. But it seems he’s too late.
Vax taps into the fact that treatment is more profitable than prevention for these huge pharmaceutical companies. Eric has been ordered to pour resources into researching treatment – something which will be provided when someone is already sick. If a vaccine were to be manufactured, it would mean less profit in the long run as less people would contract malaria. The intersection between health and profit is a dark and shadowy place. Big Pharma, used to refer collectively to major multinational pharmaceutical companies, has long been surrounded by conspiracy and controversy. According to consumer watchdog group Public Citizen, Big Pharma is the biggest defrauder of the Federal Government under the False Claims Act.[1] Perhaps the most widely known example of pharmaceutical price gouging is insulin. According to Vox, drug makers do this ‘because they can’, such to the extent that legislation is having to be created in some states to cap the price of insulin so that people can afford it.[2]
With strong cinematography that captures an eerie atmosphere created by dark labs and artificial lighting, Vax feels as though it could be a prelude to a feature thriller. Cade Carradine as Geoff and Ricco Ross as Eric play their parts with great composure, unfurling the plot with a slow deliberateness.
[1]https://www.drugwatch.com/manufacturers/#:~:text=Big%20Pharma%20is%20also%20the,companies%20continue%20to%20do%20business.
[2] https://www.vox.com/2019/4/3/18293950/why-is-insulin-so-expensive