A still from Infinity Pool by Brandon Cronenberg, an official selection of the Midnight section at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
Infinity Pool plays like a campier version of Michael Haneke’s psychological thriller Funny Games crossed with an upper class Spring Breakers all wrapped up in Brandon Cronenberg’s infamous visceral body horror style. It’s weird, grotesque, bleakly funny, and, most surprisingly, entertaining. People are going to detest it, but we can’t all have taste for hedonism.
By the time Gabi (Mia Goth) is riding on the hood of a convertible drinking straight out of a bottle of wine with a bucket of fried chicken and a gun, you’re probably wholly enamored by the frenzy of Infinity Pool or absolutely detest it. It seems “like father, like son” very much applies to the Cronenberg dynasty. Like his father, writer-director Brandon Cronenberg (who last directed the sensational Possessor) has settled into a niche of body horror meant to unsettle, unnerve, and upset. However, similar to his father’s most recent film Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg found entertainment and even humor in his madness. Even though nearly every bodily fluid imaginable is present—blood, sweat, tears, bile, spit, c-m—in another world Infinity Pool would be a mainstream horror.
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Infinity Pool doesn’t have quite the same societal commentary, but it’s impossible not to draw comparisons at least in premise. When we’re first introduced to married couple James (Alexander Skarsgård) and Em (Cleopatra Coleman) Foster—vacationing at a beautiful luxury seaside resort in the fictional country of La Tolqa—we instantly know who they are. They’re both conventionally attractive, but clearly mismatched—and bored with each other. It’s giving Harper and Ethan.
It is perhaps why James, a failed writer, is so quick to accept Gabi’s invitation to dinner when he learns she’s a fan of his work despite it not selling well and her flirtatious demeanor. We learn during dinner with Gabi and Alban (Jalil Lespert) that Em is the wealthy daughter of a book publisher—whose one piece of advice to his daughter was not to marry a writer. What does she do? Marry the first sad sap with a pen that she could find. She further explains that she essentially supports the couple—“I’m practically a charitable organization,” she quips. James doesn’t look pleased but also doesn’t fight. Skarsgård, typically a hulking (and very handsome) figure, portrays James diminutively literally hunched over for much of the movie—a physical manifestation of his repression and shrunken masculinity.
Gabi and Alban invite them outside the resort’s walls to visit a secret beach—forbidden as La Tolqa is “uncivilized” as Gabi puts it. Still, the Fosters oblige. On their way back to the resort with James at the wheel after a day of sun, boozing, and um… hand jobs—in which Gabi jacks James to a very graphic conclusion—they strike and kill a local farmer with the car. Instead of risking their chances with the local authorities—who will beat, torture, and rape them according to Gabi—they flee the scene back behind the barbed wire fences of the resort.
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Then, Detective Thresh (Thomas Kretschmann) comes knocking. When he takes the couple into the police station, James is clearly anxious, but only weakly questions and protests their detainment—more evidence of his feebleness. The police are completely sure of his guilt—thanks to Gabi and Alban’s testimonies. However, not all is lost. The police chief explains that is La Tolqa tradition to execute offenders by having the family members of the victims maim them. But, with tourism being a booming part of the economy, the country has a deal to clone offenders and instead kill the double as a symbolic punishment—for a fee, of course.
That dry-pointed humor is what makes Infinity Pool surprisingly accessible. Despite the sinister depravity that is about to ensue, the tone is continually light. After his clone is created, James watches in horror as the farmer’s son brutally stabs his double multiple times. Em shudders and looks away. James, after the bloodbath, almost looks pleased. Like he’s gotten a shot of adrenaline. Still, the events have the couple fleeing the country—or at least trying to. James seems to have misplaced his passport leading him to stumble upon Gabi and Alban again inviting him to dinner with a group of vacationers.
James discovers that the members of the group are essentially hedonist tourists chasing thrills in a country where they are essentially immortal—they’ve all committed crimes for which their doppelgängers have paid the price. Cronenberg is a visceral filmmaker and captures these indiscretions by assaulting your senses with the coked-out images and sounds of drug trips, hallucinations, f-cking, and killing. His horror is less of danger and more of our innate discomfort with our bodies—inside and out. Even a drug-fueled orgy leaves you feeling dirty as we watch bodies touching, sliding, and penetrating in graphic detail.
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Is it too late? Perhaps there’s still a chance to physically escape. Mental escape is another story. Cronenberg’s intentions with the story are perhaps sometimes drowned out by the devilish uncomfortable horror or the high-camp shenanigans of Mia Goth’s Gabi—another incredible entry in her pantheon of horror characters. Still, the tale of masculinity and emotional escape emerge in tact—themes movies like The Hunt or The Purge try and fail to mine. If anything, Infinity Pool has more in common with Michael Haneke’s sadistic home invasion satire Funny Games or Harmony Korine’s bikini-clad crime caper Spring Breakers—replace bikinis with disturbing ritual masks and two bored young men with a group of bored affluent married couples. It’s about the primal instinct to purge and society’s instinct to quash those urges—and the nightmares that come with it. Infinity Pool may bring you nightmares, but it’s worth the pleasure trip.
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Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.
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