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 (052523)
Infinity Pool is a highly erotic and violent sci-fi/ horror flick/class
commentary movie/art film with some torture porn elements thrown in. The film
has received enthusiastic reviews from most critics, but it polarized general
audiences and received either incredibly positive or extremely negative reviews
from them.
It was directed by the talented Brandon Cronenberg, son of the body horror
master, Dave Cronenberg. Brandon also directed Antiviral (2012), and Possessor
(2020). I think this film is actually a little stronger than his dad’s last
film,
Crimes of the Future
which was more fun to analyze than actually watch. Although both Cronenbergs
have some things in common including a penchant for perverse horror and breaking
cinematic taboos, with this film the extremely skilled film maker has moved
further away from his dad’s shadow and is developing his own idiosyncratic
style.
A real infinity pool is a structure holding water that is purposely designed so
the viewer cannot see the edges creating the illusion that they are not there,
and that the pool reaches into infinity. Just like the pool viewers will see
certain things they will believe to be true, but they will later learn they
can’t trust what they see and the film sometimes gives the illusion of something
false. The director himself, Brandon Cronenberg said that the film exists in
dream logic, and it is closer to magical realism than hard science fiction.
The film is far trippier than anything from his dad’s oeuvre, and it has some of
the hallucinogenic qualities of Alejandro Jodorowsky, the bloody violence of
Mario Bava, and its surrealism plus class commentary evokes at its best evokes
the work of Luis Bunel. Like Jodorowsky’s films especially El Topo, the viewer
is often left wondering if anything onscreen is actually happening and there are
a few reversals when what we think happens turns out to be false. It’s too bad
there are no more midnight films because I could have seen this film becoming a
cult classic and playing the same theatres at midnight every weekend for years
like Eraserhead or Rocky Horror Picture Show.
The original cut was rated NC7 for its graphic violence and sexual content, and
it was shown at Sundance to great acclaim at Sundance. But the R rated version
is the one that was widely released and also is the on the DVD I viewed. Even
the R version pushes the envelope, and it is more graphic than most other R
films.
The film has an extremely appealing visual style and some of the year’s best
cinematography courtesy of Karim Hussain (he also shot the beautiful and
underrated Hobo with a Shotgun). In contrast to traditional cinema which starts
out with wide shots and then focuses on a character in a close up this film does
the opposite which disorients the viewer and makes the viewer wonder where the
person is. In an Indywire interview, Hussain talked about how he used a special
tricky tool called Cinefade to change the depth of focus. This was masterfully
used in a shot with a couple, Em and James in a disintegrating marriage, and she
is shown gradually fading in her side of the frame like their vanishing
marriage.
The film starts out dashing expectations like the opening of Blue Velvet which
shows a beautiful pastoral scene but the tranquility is spoiled when we see the
severed ear. In Infinity Pool we also get a scene of a beautiful
seemingly ordinary town but then the camera turns completely over de-centering
the audience and throwing them off making them know that not everything will not
be normal or ok.
The whole cast is excellent but Mia Goth is especially memorable. Mia Goth has
terrific in everything she has been in including Nymphomaniac (2013), High Life
(2018), Suspiria (2018),
X
and
Pearl
(both 2022). Although she is becoming a
horror icon for her frequent fright film appearances, she should not be called a
scream queen because unlike Faye Wray or Asia Argento she spends more time
slashing or defending herself than screaming. Once again, she is extraordinarily
good here playing someone who is not what she appears to be.
Alexander Skarsgaard (from True Blood and
The Northman) is also completely
convincing playing James, a filthy rich but morbidly unhappy author who married into
money but has not written a book in six years in order to break his writer’s
block, he vacations in a Resort in the fictional country of Li Tolqa, a secluded
land. Although the Resort is fictional it is based on a real resort the Cronenberg
visited in the Dominican Republic. He said that the rich visitors of the resort
had to be flown in by a helicopter and the resort was surrounded by barb wire
fences around it so the rich could not mingle with the mostly poor people
outside. The actual film was shot mostly in Croatia and Hungary and the film
looks very foreign.
He is accompanied by his from big money wife, Em (Cleopatra Coleman) who seems
to hold him in contempt too at times. At one point she even says, “My father is
also a monster so I married the first broke book writer to spill a drink on me.”
Like the main character in Breaking Bad he starts out as a likeable guy that
eventually becomes a monster through circumstances. Yet we as viewers still
somewhat hope he will survive and he is still somewhat more moral than the other
characters.
At the Resort James meets an enthusiastic fan, Gabi (played by Mia Goth) who boldly
befriends him and hooks him with the opening line: “I loved your book.” He looks
surprised because perhaps he thought no one had read it. Early on she preys on
James’s weaknesses and soon seduces him leading him by the nose throughout the whole
film. Gradually Gabi and her husband Alban (Jalil Lespert) take Em and
James under their wing and guide them into a world of decadence and depravity.
James’s wife is more reluctant to participate in the chaos and leaves about
halfway through the film. This leads James to make several life changing mistakes that take
him down a darker direction.
His first mistake is escaping from the resort even though he knows it is forbidden,
something visually reinforced by all the fences and intimidating guards that are there to prevent
tourists from leaving. He quickly realizes the other side of the fence is a
world of the very superstitious, the primitive and severely unforgiving.
Accidentally he runs over a poor farmer while he is driving home
drunk. This puts him on the wrong side of the countries’ curious retributive justice
system. The other tourists don’t encourage him to go the police, in fact they tell him if the police apprehend him, they are likely to rape his
wife. When the authorities do find out about the crime and want to execute James.
But as
is the custom since he is rich he can pay off the authorities and an have
exact clone of him take his place being executed. The accused murderer must then watch his
clone die in public by the hands of the sons of the farmer he killed. It is like
watching yourself being killed and some bored rich people seems to get off on
this experience. It's all very reminiscent of the characters in poppa Cronenberg's Crash
(1996) that can only
climax if they are in a car crash. Later, to escape boredom the idle rich
people intentionally commit horrific crimes just so they can watch their clones
die for entertainment.
But the film raises some troubling questions. Are these people really all that
different from those of us who enjoy seeing shootings on the news or like to see
celebrities like Johnny Depp and Amber Heard humiliate themselves in big trials?
Aren’t Depp and the murder victims like the clones who suffer for entertainment
in this film? On the other hand, is this film which supposedly criticizing
voyeurism and exploitation of violence guilty of making us into violence loving
voyeurs?
The film is extremely ambiguous here at times. There is some confusion as to
whether the people were executed were really the clones with the memories of the
originals or the originals. Also, since at least one person awakes from a dream
at one point the whole thing might be a nightmare. I’m not sure that it all
eventually makes sense but it doesn’t really have to. The film is more interested
in blowing our minds than giving us a comforting closure or easy spoon fed answers.
Infinity Pool is a perplexing, puzzling, and disturbing film with graphic sex
and bloody special effects. It is undoubtedly not for the timid but it is
undeniable that the effects of the film are hard to shake off. When I came out
of it, I am most felt like I had had a great nightmare or been on a bad drug
trip, and I was relived it was not real. But this is an original and important
piece of cinematic art that should be sought out by all horror and sci-fi film fans
that want to be challenged.
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