2023 is still a baby and we already have a heavy contender for the wildest and weirdest movie of the year. Starring Alexander Skarsgard as James and Mia Goth as Gabi, Infinity Pool is Brandon Cronenberg’s latest addition to a blossoming catalog of sci-fi horror. Like his father David, Brandon has found his sweet spot, as Possessor (his other major film) also focuses on the idea of the body and its pilot. It is one that I think has a lot of potential and I’d love to see if it’s something he continues to pursue.
The performances by the leads are fantastic. I’ll talk more about the plot in a second, so it’ll make more sense then, but Skarsgard constantly feels like he is out of his own body and mind, and it ruled. Goth was absolutely incredible. Her character Gabi was mysterious at first and works her way to being absolutely unhinged by the end. Given it’s a horror movie, I know she won’t get the proper critical acclaim for her performance so I want to get it in writing now that she will be an absolute snub come awards season. Both Goth and Skarsgard give this movie their all, physically and mentally. I can’t even describe to you some of the things these two do in this movie, but good lord did they eat.
This movie is shot gorgeously as well, as the location was beautiful and the camerawork was fascinating. The movie uses colors and lights perfectly in my opinion. The one scene I’ll point out is where Goth and Skarsgard take a hallucinogen and have an orgy that is very intoxicating to watch, even as the colors and lights obfuscate the promiscuity, with brief flashes of sobriety to highlight the reality of the moment. Even scenes without the use of colors look great, all credit to the atmosphere Cronenberg established. I love movies that feel stylized by their director and this just feels like a Cronenberg movie.
It is truly hard to comprehend everything that happened in this movie. The gist here is that James and his wife Em (played by Cleopatra Coleman) are on vacation when they meet Gabi and her husband, Alban. They spend the day out and Skarsgard hits and kills a local driving back that night. He gets arrested and is to be executed by the family of the man he killed unless he can afford to have himself duplicated and have his double killed instead but be forced to watch, which he does, and then is forced to commit crimes for the family with his continuously created doubles taking the fall.
I bring up the fact that they are wealthy because my big takeaway was the commentary about the morality of the wealthy. After James experiences the doubling and is introduced to their friends, he is encouraged by them to act out: rob, murder, sleep with whoever because they could afford to pass the consequences off to someone else, and continue to act as they please. Compared to Triangle of Sadness, another movie that comments on the privileges of the rich, Infinity Pool gives the topic more depth and leaves more to the imagination. Gabi and her rich friends come back annually to act out their dark fantasies with no regard to who they affect because they can afford not to care. I really liked how it was explored with James (a struggling author living off his wife’s money) as our surrogate. One topic they could’ve dove deeper into was if the doubles were even the ones being killed or if the originals were being executed for their crimes with the doubles replacing them in society – something one character asks of James. I think ultimately that would’ve been a bit too much with how the rest of the movie plays out, but I wonder if that’s something Cronenberg explores in another movie.
Final Thoughts
I really did not know what to expect going into Infinity Pool. I only ever saw one trailer for the film and it deviated so much from it that I essentially came in blind. Yet, tt has been one of my favorite watches of 2023 so far, but I don’t think I can recommend it to everyone. For starters, it uses flashing lights a fair amount, so photosensitive viewers need to be careful. The movie itself gets super gory and super sexual, bordering on Terrifier territory (if you know you know). Some of the imagery is seared into my brain now. But if that is something you can handle, this movie was very good and deserves to be seen.
