Film Review: Infinity Pool
BRANDON CRONENBERG CONTINUES HIS FREAK STREAK WITH THE GOOEY, DEBAUCHED INFINITY POOL
Brandon Cronenberg follows up his 2020 sci-fi stunner Possessor with another carnival of grotesque delights in Infinity Pool. Conducting a brand new phantasmagoria of bloody satire and goopy violence, the younger Cronenberg pushes stars Alexander Skarsgård and Mia Goth to uproarious new extremes. It’s a sick blast. Minor spoilers ahead…
With Infinity Pool, filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg continues his thread of gruesome violence, bodily invasion, and mental disease wrought by technology run amok. Where his first two features, Antiviral and Possessor, clamped down as vicious traps of bloodied sci-fi, the younger Cronenberg’s latest film functions with a lighter, but equally fucked-up, touch - it would be funny if it weren’t so demented. Another skewering portrait of the wealthy flouting consequence through otherworldly science, Infinity Pool emboldens Cronenberg’s signature commentaries on class, identity, and power while obliterating the very concept of self.
James (Alexander Skarsgård), a struggling author at war with his writer’s block, finds himself on vacation with his wife Em (Cleopatra Jones) on the fictional island of Li Tolqa. Currently caught in an ignoble, wealthy stasis, James had previously written a tepidly-reviewed novel, and years of floundering and an inability to impress Em’s publisher father - who bankrolls their lavish lifestyle - has manifested a frosty marital distance between the couple. When the beleaguered writer meets an enthusiastic fan on the island named Gabi (a deliciously unhinged Mia Goth), he quickly takes up her offer of a forbidden dinner excursion outside the fortified resort walls with her husband Alban (Jalil Lespert). An evening of good company, however, is derailed when James - at the wheel of an illegally rented car on their furtive return back to the resort - accidentally mows down a local farmer. Despite the group’s best efforts to cover up the hit-and-run, James is quickly snatched up by the Li Tolqan authorities in the morning and sentenced to be executed by the dead man’s young son. It’s here that the local, dystopian underbelly of colonial tourism rears its head: For a hefty fee, the police offer to clone James - memories and faculties intact - and send his doppelgänger kicking and screaming to his death in his place. The only catch? He has to watch.
“…Infinity Pool emboldens Cronenberg’s signature commentaries on class, identity, and power while rending mind from body and obliterating the very concept of self.”
Seemingly cornered, James opts to be doubled; his clone is eviscerated before his very eyes and soon enough, he’s released back to the Li Tolqa resort with nary a consequence. In a daze after witnessing his own execution, James falls in even deeper with Gabi and Alban, whose true colors slowly unravel before him. Belonging to a whole cadre of hedonistic thrill-seekers, the couple - along with their expat companions - reveal themselves to be more than well-versed in the island’s judiciary cloning: they’ve all been duplicated before. Through a phantasmagorical alchemy of dread, hallucinations, and wild violence, Infinity Pool dives right into the muck of a poor island nation fully willing to turn a blind eye to its deviant colonial tourists, provided they can pay the price.
Cronenberg, employing a swirl of stark imagery and almost every bodily fluid imaginable, waves his freak flag high: Goopy, nasty, and surreal, Infinity Pool keeps with his cinematic kinks. Once again utilizing the talents of Antiviral and Possessor DP Karim Hussain, the film’s flourishes feature eye-popping close-ups and dream-like neons to sell the evaporation of self, all contrasted with its typically steely palette. There’s plenty of repeating motifs carried over from Possesssor, and sometimes Infinity Pool feels like it’s recycling the hits with diminishing returns, but there’s still nothing quite like Cronenberg’s unique designs on unmoored reality. Like chasing a high, Cronenberg punctuates Infinity Pool’s malaise with visual punches to the gut, as if to ask the potent question: With infinite wealth and zero consequences, how much of your soul would you sell in the pursuit of pleasure?
“Cronenberg, employing a swirl of stark imagery and almost every bodily fluid imaginable, waves his freak flag high: Goopy, nasty, and surreal, Infinity Pool keeps with his cinematic kinks.”
Infinity Pool’s sick delights are only heightened by Alexander Skarsgård’s adept performance - a hazy, debilitating spiral as home invasions, murders, and drug-fueled orgies unfold around him, all abetted by moneyed privilege - but it’s Mia Goth who is the shining star. Transmogrifying from enthusiastic fangirl to screeching bully and manipulator, Goth continues her reign as scream queen following last year’s X and Pearl, this time with an unhinged showcase crushing a hapless Alexander Skarsgård under her boot heel.
Cronenberg, again blurring the destruction of the body with the erosion of consciousness, seems to be aiming at familiar targets, but he’s also never been lighter: The nasty and surprisingly funny Infinity Pool is repetition without ever feeling tiresome. This time around, the hard-steel viciousness of Antiviral and Possessor are leavened by a biting black humor; there’s no visual gag better - nor more uproarious - than Alexander Skarsgård piling up a whole stack of “souvenir” urns of his dead doubles’ ashes. And a mid-film cutaway gag - which I won’t spoil here - also cuts the tension in a morbidly perverse way. “Eat the rich” cinema has become such a Hollywood mainstay - see last year’s The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, Glass Onion - that it’s easy to take umbrage at more “rich people behaving badly” narratives, but Cronenberg is so blisteringly capable of constructing his own grotesque, hedonistic netherworlds that it’s hard to care too much.
