The Reel Review
After a wealthy tourist accidentally kills a local man while vacationing at a high-end resort in a conservative, developing country, he discovers he can pay for the creation of a clone to fulfill his sentence – execution. This surreal discovery frees him to embark on an amoral, drug-fueled orgy of depravity, in this Brandon Cronenberg sci-fi/horror starring Alexander Skarsgård and Mia Goth.
Visually, this trippy kaleidoscope of horror is the younger Cronenberg’s best film to date. It is spectacular in its boldness, illustrating a violent, nudity-filled, hedonistic world where the wealthy seem to rarely pay for their sins. The film also features some very committed, all-in performances from Skarsgård and especially Goth (Pearl, X) as the mesmerizing but terrifying Gabi.
Despite that, Cronenberg’s story is pretty silly and sophomoric, clearly more focused on creating a wildly unpredictable and violent funhouse of absurdity than anything resembling thought provoking or even coherent storytelling. After a promising start, Infinity Pool eventually drowns under the weight of its own ridiculousness, falling a bit short of his 2020 film, Possessor that starred 2023 Oscar nominee Andrea Riseborough (To Leslie).
REEL FACTS
• Brandon Cronenberg (Possessor, Antiviral) withheld Infinity Pool from Cannes so as not to distract from his father’s body horror/sci-fi thriller Crimes of the Future which was in competition.
• Brandon Cronenberg says he came up with the concept for Infinity Pool after recounting a vacation trip to the Dominican Republic 20 years ago, where he was bused-in overnight in total darkness past poverty-stricken neighborhoods to a high-end resort surrounded by a barbed-wire fence.
• Filmed in the Amadria Park Hotel in Šibenik, Croatia, and in Budapest, Hungary, Infinity Pool also has an NC-17 version.
Video & Photo
