Infinity Pool: Hedonistic Lifestyles Of The Rich And The Famous
James and Em Foster are enjoying an all-inclusive beach vacation in the fictional island of La Tolqa, when a fatal accident exposes the resort's perverse subculture of hedonistic tourism, reckless violence, and surreal horrors.
Brandon Cronenberg makes movies about individuals who grapple with and are ultimately transformed by their environment and the culture, which both tend to be cutthroat and capitalistic in nature. With Antiviral, he tackled the cult of celebrity and took our collective fanaticism and worship to sick new extremes. In the brutal and exhilarating thriller POSSESSOR, he subtly focused on a corporation’s ability to erode the humanity from a valued employee (in this case, a corporate assassin) to increase the company’s own power and profits. And now, with Infinity Pool, he cooks up a sadistic satire about how the wealthy elite can galavant about as they wish without any repercussions, positing that even a vacation shared in their world — especially when it involves acts of ultraviolence — could destroy not only our humanity, but maybe even our soul.
Naturally, there’s an emphasis on body horror — after all, Brandon is a Cronenberg — but Infinity Pool affirms that he’s developed his own artistic voice that stands adjacent to his father’s. He’s not very interested in the disintegration or evolution of our body, but more so seems to be teasing out humanity’s place in a world dominated by money and greed — or if it even has one. In his films, you’re either absorbed by the system or destroyed by it. There is generally no in-between for his characters, and the same is true of Infinity Pool’s James Foster, a struggling writer (played by Alexander Skarsgård) vacationing with his wife at a fancy seaside resort. The film primes us for its strange hedonistic head trip with its ominous opening line, “You can’t feed yourself white-sand brain death.”
Set in a surreal alternate reality, at the Pa Qlqa Pearl Princess resort in the fictional seaside country of Li Tolqa, we follow James as he flounders for the inspiration — or perhaps the courage — to pen a follow-up novel to his poorly received debut, The Variable Sheath, which was published six years ago through his father-in-law’s publishing company. The book’s financial inadequacies is only one of many points of contention for James and his wife, but their rocky marriage gets a whole new stresser when they bump into a fan of James’ crummy novel at the resort, Gabi (Mia Goth), an actress vacationing with her husband (Jalil Lespert).
Things take a dark and surreal turn when James accidentally kills a local in a drunken hit and run, which exposes him to the country’s eye-for-an-eye custom. Arrested for his crimes, James is informed that he’s been sentenced to death at the hand of his victim’s firstborn son. This may sound pretty inescapable, but there’s a bizarre loophole that’s afforded to the wealthy within this justice system that allows them to clone themselves for a large fee and have their duplicates executed in their place — on the pretense that they be present at the execution to watch. Fortunate for James, he married rich, so he uses some of his wife’s money to double himself, which gives way to one of the film’s many trippy, psychedelic-tinged sequences.
At the execution, Em is absolutely devastated and deeply sickened by what she sees, but James is excited by the bloodshed. Em wants to leave the country immediately, but James’ misplaced passport makes their hasty exit an impossibility. But is it really missing or is this James’ way of sticking around? The film eventually answers that question, but first it revels in the debauchery, havoc, and terror that its privileged vacationeers inflict on the locals and their officials, which results in more doubling and more executions. It also opens the door to some interesting questions that Cronenberg smartly elects not to answer, like: is James really himself, or is he the double but doesn’t know it? What begins as a hedonistic rumpus slowly gives way to a dark and ruinous game of cat-and-mouse that gives James a blood-fueled baptism and makes him forever unclean, resulting in a terrific final shot.
Infinity Pool plays like a kinky and deranged cross between Society (1989), Dual (2022), POSSESSOR (2020), and season one of the White Lotus. Its darkly comedic examination of class also brings last year’s The Menu and Triangle Of Sadness to mind. Its sick sense of humor, thought-provoking concepts, stimulating visuals, and excellent performances (particularly Skarsgård and Goth) make it one hell of a genre film experience. It might not cut as deep as POSSESSOR, but it finds Cronenberg honing his craft and making a potent and visceral statement on the inequalities of the capitalist machine.
Recommendation: If you’re a fan of the Cronenberg-esque and looking for something to scratch that horror/sci-fi itch, you’ll find Infinity Pool to be an all-inclusive resort for those specific needs. Even though it wasn’t quite as penetrating as POSSESSOR for us, we still think this savage and surreal slice of extreme cinema must be witnessed!
Murderous for more?! Check out the links below:
POSSESSOR review
Crimes Of The Future review
TITANE review
Raw (2017) review
Films starring Mia Goth
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!