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The Reel Review

C

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.

Alexander Skarsgård and Mia Goth in Infinity Pool

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.

John Ralston and Mia Goth in Infinity Pool

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 and David Cronenberg at Cannes

• 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.

The Amadria Park Hotel in Sibenik, Croatia.

• Filmed in the Amadria Park Hotel in Šibenik, Croatia, and in Budapest, Hungary, Infinity Pool also has an NC-17 version.

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