Rent Infinity Pool (2023)

A revelatory Goth crackles in a shocking psycho-sexual body horror which just about holds together - Infinity Pool review by TB

I am not a big fan of horror, having only watched a handful of the genre of genuine "horror films" (I don't count films like Alien & Aliens as horror due to having as much of the action genre spliced in with it as the horror element.) Some of them have had a big impact on me (The Shining really messed with my head, Eden Lake was an exercise in slow & gruelling punishment,) but to be honest, mostly I just can't take it seriously. However, body horror is one which I haven't really watched any of, so this was a real eye opener, even if it did start to run out of steam towards the end.

James Foster & his wife Em are holidaying in the exclusive resort of Li Tolqa. The holiday destination is unique as guests are not permitted outside the grounds & the whole place is surrounded with barbed wire with armed guards patrolling. Foster is an unsuccessful writer who is financially supported by his wife, and this among many things is clearly straining their marriage. One day, James starts to talk with Gabi, a vivacious & highly enigmatic actress who is staying with her husband.

On an unauthorised trip outside the resort, James accidentally hits a man whilst driving & then discovers the unusual rule of law on the island: you can pay for a double of yourself to be created to take the sentence of death imposed on anyone who kills a resident of the island. This then starts off a chain of law-breaking & more extreme acts with James & the new group of friends he makes.

Overall I did really like the film, especially the psychosexual element of it. Whether it is the scene where, after a deliberate slow ratcheting up of tension & uncomfortableness, we see James suddenly being surprised by Gabi & her pleasuring him to completion before she walks away without saying a word; through to the trippy & psychedelic orgy, the tension & hyper sexuality is always just below the surface. There is also a highly effective use of different extremely distressing masks which the various members of the party wear whilst carrying out their crime sprees.

However for me, in the final third, the film just becomes too silly to keep up the shocks & horror. The prosthetics, whilst convincingly made, become as ridiculous as the situation James finds himself in, never more so than the final face-off against "the dog." In what was meant to be in many ways the pay-off to the story, especially after watching the previous challenges/dares the party goads each other into doing, it just didn't work & pretty much fell flat.

However, this film has a stunning & towering central performance from Mia Goth. Introduced as a pushy, posh & needy actress, who then turns into a complete psychopath with a banshee-style shriek, Gabi is a walking, talking nightmare. Goth fully embraces every facet of the character, where it is the sweet, almost childlike innocence through to the hypersexualised nymphomaniac who coerces Alexander Skarsgård's loser novelist into taking drugs & engaging in utter debauchery.

Whilst I did wish the film had nailed the ending, I cannot deny I was swept up in the hideous & extremely unsettling world that Cronenberg created. But this film would have been nothing without Goth's towering performance.

Flawed Body Horror - Infinity Pool review by GI

This is a shockingly graphic body horror film with boundary pushing sex scenes and some eye watering gore. There is something rather unfulfilling about it though and once it's over you're left with a vague feeling of being unsatisfied and the shock elements don't make up for it. Alexander Skarsgård, once again stepping away from his hunky man persona, plays James who along with his wife Em, (Cleopatra Coleman) are taking a holiday on a plush island resort on a fictitious island. The guests are restricted to staying on the resort but fellow guests, the enigmatic and beautiful Gabi (Mia Goth) and Alban (Jalil Lespert), befriend the couple and entice them to go to a remote beach. On the way back a drunken James runs over and kills a local leading to his arrest. Draconian local laws stipulate the punishment for his crime is death but James is offered an alternative and his decision pushes him into a surreal world of hedonistic violence and depraved sex. Director Brandon Cronenberg seems to be taking up his father's mantle again here with his emphasis on body horror that in this narrative seems linked to hallucingenic drug abuse but thematically it's some sort of treatise on entitlement. James is lured into the strange world far too readily as if the director wants to hurriedly get to the shocks without really focusing on the themes he's attempting to expose. Mia Goth is once again a stand out here, she is beautiful, mysterious and dominates the film but overall this is not an enjoyable film although fans of Cronenberg senior will relish his son continuing his legacy.

a true Cronenberg gem - Infinity Pool review by SL

Influences: his dad’s oeuvre [Dead Ringers!], A LOT OF JG Ballard, David Lynch, Angela Carter, Andy Warhol [art films], A Clockwork Orange, Brazil, Haneke’s Funny Games, The White Lotus, Timothy Leary, Charles Manson, and Italian giallo, video nasties, lashings of fake blood, some generic [s]exploitation.

A bonkers plot, an unabashed, exuberant indulgence in psychedelic video effects that were cool in 1967 -and why not! All of this makes a great movie, like an adrenaline shot in the heart.