Infinity Pool (2023)

Review

117min

Genre:     Crime, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Director:   Brandon Cronenberg

Cast:       Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Coleman…and more

Writers:   Brandon Cronenberg

-Synopsis-

An idyllic beach vacation at an exclusive island resort for a young couple turns into a surrealist nightmare when the husband is sentenced after a tragic accident, only to be offered a disturbing way out and drawn into the macabre decadent subculture of some hedonistic fellow vacationers and the corruption of the local authorities, in this dark and bizarre class meditation from the heir apparent to the body horror crown.

After skewering celebrity culture in dark style with his 2012 feature debut ‘Antiviral’ and blurring the lines of reality with his 2020 brutalist hallucinatory sci-fi sophomore feature ‘Possessor’, Canadian writer/director Brandon Cronenberg delves back into an obsession with identity and crime & consequence with blood-soaked gusto. Plunging his audience into another bleakly mesmerising living nightmare with something to say about our society, whilst dragging the viewer through a merciless mystery which tries to reveal something about our own nature—on the path to further underlining his credentials the heir apparent to his father’s body horror crown.

Alexander Skarsgård stars as published but struggling author ‘James Foster’, on a secluded all-inclusive resort getaway with unexpected extras along with his wealthy wife ‘Em’ (Cleopatra Coleman), trying to find artistic and personal inspiration but getting more than he bargained for when he meets fellow vacationer ‘Gabi’ (Mia Goth) and her group of decadently devious fellow guests, and is plunged into a surrealist existential rabbit hole of corruption and excess after getting caught in an arcane local legal web after a fateful accident.

Three movies into his feature filmmaking career and Brandon Cronenberg has proven that the cinematic apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, displaying a bloody penchant for confounding audiences and deeply unsettling them with surrealist sinister tales, and unafraid to confront us with our deepest fears or scrape the dark underbelly of humanity to say something about it—playing his part in creating cinematic nightmares befitting his family name.

Moodily bathed in natural light in the day but draped in a nightmarish neon hue and crimson red motifs during the witching hour by cinematographer Karim Hussain (The ABCs of Death, Possessor), ‘Infinity Pool’ was shot in studio in Hungary and picturesque Croatian locations but is set in the fictional country of “La Tolqa”, an underdeveloped island nation kept under the thumb of a strict and corrupt government, which keeps a permissive agreement with its wealthy tourists in their isolated and secure resorts.

And Cronenberg doesn’t miss the opportunity of a sun-soaked setting to return to his penchant for fishing out the ills of modern society in striking and confounding style, this time offering up a dark and macabre clash of cultures and corruptions which builds on his efforts in ‘Possessor’, not to mention saying something about the masks we all wear in society, even using literals masks of a grotesque nature and disturbing doppelgangers to make his point. The surrealist cinematic experience he concocts takes further leaves out of the Gaspar Noé book of sensory overload and trippy transitions, delivering a psychedelic potpourri of sex and debauchery to complement the violence and anarchy, with the frenzied energy and strobe visuals to match. Meanwhile the film’s palpably menacing mood is set by a score from Canadian composer Tim Hecker (The Free World, Luzifer), who combines unconventional sounds which are often punctuating and pulsating with atmospheric and occasionally jarring rhythms to create a subtly otherworldly quality, helping to create a foreboding tone throughout.

Yet despite its many bold and hypnotic parts, ‘Infinity Pool’ struggles to prove more than a stylish sum of them, even with a solid central performance from Alexander Skarsgård as the everyman living under a façade and slowly broken into the dog who gets beat and his nose rubbed in s**t, a pawn in the film’s dark socially-reflective ethos of destructive venting and complete ego death before rebirth, rinse & repeat. But even the many eccentric charms of Mia Goth—who has earned her growing reputation as a premiere new scream (or rather scream-making) queen—can’t prevent the slow decline of her character as a genuine agent of menace and chaos at the heart of the film, nor does it help to halt the erosion of momentum or the fading sense of real peril and tension into the all-important 3^rd act.

Once the mystery of the resort is revealed and the nature of its visitors fully uncovered, the film loses much of its mystique and thrill, with the spectacle becoming more bizarre but altogether less gripping as the film lingers in its surrealism, much the way that its protagonist lingers on the island and its bad company, turning ‘Infinity Pool’ into the macabre and bizarre study on self-improvement it’s designed to be.

Yet even though ‘Infinity Pool’ never postures as a piece of truly insightful or considered sci-fi, the barely explored pseudo-scientific MacGuffin it uses to propel the plot ends up being more interesting than anything it does with it, and more profound than what the movie has to say, not to mention out of place within the setting and the film as a whole.

It’s not all doom & gloom though, or rather it is in terms of the story but not the experience, as Cronenberg hooks you in with just enough meat on the narrative bone and plunges you into an overstimulated sensory acid trip which grabs you by the nether regions. The result is morbidly mesmerising and stylishly surreal enough to make an immediate impression but not enough to leave a mark, let alone conjure together a story or the performances to leave a lasting memory, even despite its initial promise.

The Bottom Line…

Brandon Cronenberg’s latest dark and daring concoction proves a macabrely moody and frenzied pseudo sci-fi horror/thriller with a promising premise but which ultimately underdelivers, boasting plenty of surrealist style and confounding energy but less in the way of substance, narrative, or genuine thrills, and only a morsel of the social food for thought it initially promises—all-in-all a sometimes exhilarating, often disturbing and hypnotic but none too memorable cinematic experience.

Similar films you may like (Home Video)

Possessor (2020)

A deadly but troubled operator for a shadowy organisation infiltrates the bodies of high value targets with brain implants and mind control technology, turning them into avatars for profit, only for her latest mission to go awry when the lines between hallucination and reality, and between host and possessor become blurred . . . with bloody consequences for all.

Directed by Brandon Cronenberg and starring Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott and Jennifer Jason Leigh among others.

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