Title: Infinity Pool
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Starring: Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Coleman
Runtime: 1 hr 57 mins

What It Is: An affluent couple from America named James (Skarsgård) and Em (Coleman) travel for a weekend at a high-end beach resort on the island La Tolqa. They and other rich vacationers are driven through the strange, industrial town into a relaxing utopia. There, James meets Gabi Bauer (Goth), an unpredictable young woman who is accompanied by her partner, Alban. Gabi seems to take a deep, if not obsessive interest in James, and acts on it. Following an unforeseen and off-putting interaction between James and Gabi, James takes himself and company out on a drive, only to cause a tragic and shocking accident. Though Gabi insists on leaving the incident behind, that the country’s punishments are far too severe, the group is caught nonetheless by the militant authorities and are forced to make a decision: to be executed, or have a clone made of themselves to be slaughtered in their place. They chose the latter, of course, and are made to watch their clones be offed. While Jame’s wife is horrified, James becomes involved with Gabi and her associates as he becomes more and more involved in the process of committing crimes at the expense of his clones.

What We Think: Brandon Cronenberg’s universe is becoming all the more clear, feeling more and more like an extension of the David Cronenbergaverse as very unique case studies in a timeline that leads to a bleak downward spiral into moral ambiguity, loss of identity and individuality, loss of purpose, extreme classism, dirty mega-corporations, and reliance on technology and consumerism. There’s a lot of pieces that fit into a much larger puzzle that reflects our current affairs, and that’s what makes each entry from either director so exciting to embark, as every project reveals something challenging and revealing.

Recently from Brandon, we had Possessor, an amazing film (that I recently rewatched, and it definitely holds up) about technology that allows a player from a corporation to possess a body in order to assassinate typically affluent and important figures. Then from David, Crimes of the Future, an exploration of an underground art scene in which a self-mutilating artist comes to fully realize and express the importance of how his own and secretly others’ bodies have been mutated by plastics and how humans are evolving to not only survive, but become the materials of their own manufactured waste.

Here with Infinity Pool, we have a man whose loss of purpose as someone who has married into affluence in a dystopian economy culminates into a disastrous and useless cycle of ultra violence that, to him, may appear to be some sort of poetic stunt of karmic masochism, but is also admittedly a really stupid and silly lifestyle of perpetual sadism. He’s never actually the one suffering, though interestingly in his initiation into this weird hobby by Gabi’s hyper fixated cult, constantly acts as if he’s the one who is, perhaps in some sort of pressing egoist framing, considering he sounds much like a failed or “fake” writer. James has nothing to him, notably: nothing really identifiable or cool or special about him. He’s just some well-off guy. I can’t tell you what makes him up as a character, but as the violence continues throughout the film, I think it’s his means of reaching something close to a reason to be, and you see how he grows an attachment to it, whether or not it actually horrifies him or appears to be against his will. James has become the violence and trauma he’s enacted the entire time, and you realize its also the case for those also afflicted with the ability to use their clones as a means to do anything they would like. While Gabi appears to be the ultimate force of persuasion and chaos, she does it also as a means of indulgence, though her and other characters have more of themselves revealed and makes it clear that James is still the one left feeling the most shallow and empty.

I’m reminded a LOT of White Lotus, another great and funny project about the uselessness of the rich and the drama they feed off of without much concern for how it affects those around them, only instead of Mia Goth wielding a gun and screaming at Alexander Skarsgård calling him a little baby, you have Jennifer Coolidge wielding a gun on a yacht paranoid “The Gays” are out to get her. Both projects paint a severe disconnect these sorts of individuals have in the face of much larger issues impacting the world around them, ignorant of the extremely overworked lower class, physical and financial waste, and environmental breakdown–their concerns tangled only with the status quo and whatever keeps their brains from atrophying in the face of boredom.

Our Grade: B, While conceptually consistent and well-played within the whole of both Cronenbergs’ works, it’s good to remind oneself, namely me, not to expect a huge, end-of-the-world sort of scope for these sci-fi movies. They’re gross, trippy, suggestive, and subversive, but unlike a lot of the other projects, this one let its characters be a lot more exaggerated and, well, silly. You’re meant to laugh and to cringe at these characters running around, acting like nut jobs while their clones are being murdered and tortured in terrible ways. While you can absolutely gush in the fleshy lore, cold atmosphere, stylish design, and competent filmmaking, this is also obviously the most meme-able movie either Cronenberg has ever made. And I’m pretty okay with that–I had a good time. The characters, in all their craziness and drug trips and orgies meant to distract themselves are also distractions themselves, as the depressing outside world is shown, but only briefly. The spotlight goes to them, a gorgeously casted bunch who do the most bombastic and shimmeringly disgusting acts that to their characters is cathartic and meaningful, but to us, is clearly really, hilariously fucking gross and embarrassing. A lot of people will love this movie because of the undeniably great film making, and a lot of people are also going to hate this movie for how straight up nasty it is. I like it, it was a good time, and I’m already looking forward for whatever debauchery Brandon Cronenberg has for us next. I don’t know if this has nearly the same rewatchability for me like Possessor does as its characters and plot are more complex and interesting, but it’s still a sci-fi psychological body horror cinematic win in my book, and I’m interesting to see who and what are of focus in the next chapter.