Frustrating ‘Infinity Pool’ Feels Like a Rehash of Brandon Cronenberg’s Earlier Films [Sundance]

I come as the bearer of bad news: Brandon Cronenberg’s “Infinity Pool” doesn’t amount to anything meaningful. This is disappointing, considering his last film was 2020’s visionary “Possessor.”

“Infinity Pool” feels like a retread of Cronenberg’s first two movies. It’s also by far the weakest of his three features to date. It's an exercise in style over substance that is way too excessive and empty, despite another God-tier performance from Mia Goth.

While on vacation at a resort, located in a vaguely defined fascist/authoritarian state, a failed author, James (Skarsgaard), and his rich supporting wife meet a couple and decide to leave the grounds, against the instruction of the staff, for a picnic filled with unexpected sexual acts.

The beautiful scenery soon turns into nightmare as they kill someone in a drunk-driving incident. James is taken to a prison where he’s told that — since he’s a tourist from an ally country — they can duplicate him and have his clone receive the death penalty instead. However, James is forced to watch the stabbing death, but in doing so finds a certain kind of pleasure in seeing himself get gruesomely murdered.

A film meant meant to shock and disgust, “Infinity Pool” starts off in fascinating fashion, but taking its cues on the themes of power, corruption, and privilege, renders it too obvious and, dare I say it, dull. James eventually tags along with a group of tourists who it turns out kill for a living and get turned on by seeing their clones get the death penalty.

I’m actually surprised this movie isn’t NC-17. There's a fully explicit erect-penis ejaculation shot amongst a number of other NC-17 level graphic sequences, not to mention a stabbing that is taken to a whole other level of graphic derangement.

Saarsgard and Goth shine, to the point where I hope they team up again in another movie. Despite the script lapses in this perverse and trippy island vacation, their chemistry is excellent and deserved of a better movie.

Cronenberg’s empty, surface-level approach starts feeling like a retread of his other earlier works. The body-horror isn’t even that inventive either, instead opting for a conventional bout of conceptual violence. Still, Cronenberg is a talented visualist who is very gifted at boxing shots. Hopefully “Infinity Pool” turns out to be one of the rare misfires of what could be a promising career.