The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in “Infinity Pool” (2023), the latest and most hyped release from writer-director Brandon Cronenberg, the son of genre legend David. The story of a couple (Alexander Skarsgard’s James and Cleopatra Coleman’s Em) vacationing in posh resort on the coast of a third-world nation starts off in familiar horror territory but soon becomes a mind-f***.
The smartly titled “Infinity Pool” is intellectual horror – remarkably focused on its point amid loads of style — but not fun horror. It features the most hilariously quick shift from reality into futuristic sci-fi I’ve ever seen, coming amid understated dialog from a government detective/judge who questions and convicts James after his nighttime car accident kills a farmer.
A variety of angles
I wasn’t against the switch, since I didn’t want to settle in for 2 hours in the “corrupt third-world government brutalizes American tourists” subgenre. (While the film does remind us how thin the veneer of civilization is, it avoids emphasizing foreignness or backwardness. The country is fictional and the locals are from no specific place, although probably the actors are from Canada, Croatia and Hungary – as per the shooting locations. This is a PC creep-fest.)
“Infinity Pool” (2023)
Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Writer: Brandon Cronenberg
Stars: Alexander Skarsgard, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Coleman
Cronenberg makes good use of his stars, taking advantage of their types but also going against them. Skarsgard gives us a brief reprise of his suave but unhinged abusive husband from “Big Little Lies,” but James isn’t the villain; he’s the audience surrogate.
Mia Goth continues to choose sharp horror screenplays; she plays Gabi, a friendly fellow vacationer who is too friendly with James, considering that he’s married and so is she. Gabi’s husband, Alban (Jalil Lespert) is an intriguing presence, one of those smooth, generous rich guys you want to trust. But Cronenberg, perhaps having seen “X” and “Pearl,” knows he needs to unleash Goth; your mileage will vary with Gabi as events unspool.
Cronenberg smoothly gets us to fear weird cultures and feel uneasy around Gabi and Alban. However, these staples of horror merely presage a much weirder theme.
A question of identity (Spoilers)
(SPOILERS FOLLOW.)
“Infinity Pool” probes bizarre and scary divergences from something we take for granted: that each of us is one individual living in one body. By messing with that foundation, a viewer might take on the most common facial expression of James: disoriented.
The way the screenplay presents individualism as something prone to decay calls to mind a major theme of TV’s “Westworld,” where the scientists are concerned about the fidelity of the clone robots. But there’s little discussion of this weird science and its implications via dialogue – except early on. Gabi’s and Alban’s cult of self-replication blatantly asks James the big question: Does he worry that he’s not really himself?
Rather than becoming talky, “Infinity Pool” launches into an emotional treatment of the core question, with James as our often unwilling guide.
Like a drug trip (Spoilers)
Cronenberg is certainly a stylist. James’ first meeting with the cult of six (with he himself as a tentative seventh wheel) is framed so we only see the faces of the three people we already know. We wonder: Is James into this or isn’t he?
And when James takes the group’s drug of choice, the director gives us the visual and aural equivalent of a psychedelic trip. The debauchery and hedonism almost oozes through the screen. Even with Goth and Skarsgard in the cast, though, Cronenberg doesn’t make a sexy film. Sex scenes between the duo drift toward body horror and James’ trauma and shame over shattered, pointless intimacy. And even though the action starts at a beachside resort, we want to get away as quickly as Em does after the first horrific incident.
Cronenberg never lets style distract from the SF concept; we aren’t allowed to escape the story’s weirdness into stylistic weirdness … or dark humor, or another redefining twist. “Infinity Pool” is too unpredictable to be fatalistic, yet too predictable to offer an escape. James is so battered by the duplication process, the corrupt officials and his fellow cult members that there’s no opening for him to be heroic.
“Infinity Pool” is a brilliant mind-trip, wherein rollercoaster-ride horror cliches simply aren’t in Cronenberg’s vocabulary. I admire the film and will have a good time thinking further about it. Keeping it from greatness, though, I too often didn’t have a good time watching it.