Infinity Pool (2023) | REVIEW

Directed by Brandon Cronenberg — Screenplay by Brandon Cronenberg.

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” former U.S. President Donald Trump said at a campaign rally in 2016. With what has happened since then — such as his supporters’ January 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, or the unyielding support that Trump still receives even after having been indicted (checks notes) 4 times — I think it would be fair to say that he’s probably right, even though it absolutely should not be true. Some people are just gobsmackingly blind to what is really going on — and once they find out who people really are, it is sometimes too late. Anyway, why am I mentioning this? Well, this idea that the uber-privileged have no relationship with consequences is something that has stuck with me ever since I first saw Infinity Pool, which is not at all about Trump but definitely is about who people are behind the masks that they hide behind in their outward-facing daily lives.

Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool follows novelist James Foster (played by Alexander Skarsgård) and his wife Em (played by Cleopatra Coleman) at a luxurious resort in a fictional European country called Li Tolqa. James ‘married rich’ and is still struggling with writer’s block partly as a result of poor readership and poor reviews of his first and only novel. That’s when they run into Gabi (played by Mia Goth) who professes her love for his written word. Gabi and her husband Alban (played by Jalil Lespert) invite them on a road trip outside of the heavily guarded resort, which they had been instructed not to leave. That’s when everything goes awry as an accident shows the guests’ true colors and the dark secrets of the country’s tourist culture.

I am hesitant to give any additional details about the plot of Infinity Pool. This is a dark and absurd film that goes to some very interesting places, but I think it would be a shame to experience this film for the first time knowing everything about it beforehand. In this review, I will have to discuss some aspects of the film, but I will not go into too many specifics opting instead to point out some of its themes and interests. What I will say at this juncture, though, is that this is not your average holiday thriller or horror picture. It isn’t full of mind-numbing but popular jumpscares, it’s not a supernatural film, and I suspect it is a film that won’t sit well with the kinds of people that are unprepared for the kind of films that auteurs like Nicolas Winding Refn, Gaspar Noe, or, frankly, Brandon Cronenberg’s father, David Cronenberg, are drawn towards.

This film — Brandon Cronenberg’s third feature — features disorienting close-ups — and extreme close-ups of eyes and lips — as well as scenes depicting ritualistic and sadistic hedonism. There is a lot of extreme nudity, there are moments of extreme violence, a scene with disgusting reddish goo that felt claustrophobic to me, and there are Refn-esque lights to depict pure and utter intoxication. It is something that you either go with or you don’t, and I know that a lot of people will find it to be abhorrent. But I don’t think it is. It absolutely is icky at times and it does depict depravity, but the style and the story that these upsetting scenes are built around are fascinating.

The first Brandon Cronenberg film that I ever saw was his second effort, Possessor, an excellent sci-fi horror film that I kind of think of as Inception‘s extremely violent, low-budget cousin about identity and privacy, or lack thereof. Just like Infinity Pool, Possessor is partly concerned with what it means to be in control of your body, imposter syndrome, and how we can lose control of our own identity the more we experience detachment from ourselves. But where Possessor — which features excellent work from Andrea Riseborough and Christopher Abbott, who both deliver excellent confused and tortured performances — zigs to be a bloody film about surveillance and not being able to switch off between work and home-life, Infinity Pool zags to explore the no-consequence hedonisitic escapades of a privileged few.

Infinity Pool is a film that, I think, feels both angry and personal in its focus on excess, temptation, lust, Western savagery, and psychopathic detachment. It is personal in that it feels like — especially in the later half — a film in which the younger Cronenberg is struggling with his position and his entry into the film industry. I wonder if Brandon is, with this film, trying to exorcise some of his own insecurities related to gatekeeping, nepotism, and self-criticism. But, at the same time, it is clear as day, to me, that this is a film about a Faustian bargain to save your neck and in return sell your body and dignity.

The film is concerned with bodily autonomy and lack thereof, but also with how we tend to crave acceptance from people and if we are willing to suck on the bloody teat of wealth to gain it — how some of us may be willing to make a mockery of ourselves if it means getting what we want. It feels particularly angry about the absurdity of wealth and its no-consequence freedoms and how we are expected to bend over backward to let them have it their way. There is also an aspect of this that comments on the fetishization of culture and appropriation of culture to live out innermost urges only to shed them as uncivilized when it becomes convenient.

I should make note of the central performances that guide us through the younger Cronenberg’s nightmarish vacation. Alexander Skarsgård delivers a giving performance with which he allows himself to be very much unlike how we’re used to seeing him. Here he is out of control and chasing the coolness that often oozes off him elsewhere. Mia Goth is becoming a true scream queen with her go-for-broke but delightful performances. Here her performance is equal parts lunacy and allure, and she dances on the line with a confidence that you can’t take your eyes off.

However, what I think holds the film back from earning even more critical acclaim than it has already had is that the film makes its point a little bit early and, as a result, the final act is not quite as engaging as it ought to be. That said, I do still think the film says intriguing things in its final third, where some hard truths are revealed. But I can understand if some people think its ‘eat the rich’ mentality becomes played out or if the privileged Westerners’s remarks about the locals feel too unsubtly expressed.

Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool is a trippy and disorienting vacation thriller about losing touch with who you really are due to the intoxicating effect of acceptance and consequence-free living. I thought it was a deeply fascinating film that manages to be in deep conversation with stuff like The White Lotus and the surging eat-the-rich cinematic trend but does so in violent and uncensored ways that won’t be accessible to everyone. It sometimes asks similar questions to those asked in Brandon Cronennbeg’s previous film — Possessor — but it does so in a way that never feels like a retread.

8.5 out of 10

– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.