Brandon Cronenberg makes a failed writer plunge into inner darkness in the unsettling and mesmerizing horror film 'Infinity Pool'.
«The more people in the pool, the greater the displaced volume and the more intense the purification»
James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) is lounging with his wife (Cleopatra Coleman) at a posh resort – an island of luxury behind barbed wire in the fictional third-world country of La Tolqa. James is a writer, but six years have passed since the release of his first and only book. All this time, he has been struggling with writer's block and living off his wife's wealth. The sandy beaches and satiated seclusion of La Tolqa seem to him an excellent place to catch inspiration.
The hunter meets a beast named Gabi (with the face of Mia Goth) – a passionate and mysterious fan of Foster's work. She and her husband Alban (Jalil Lespert) have long made the resort their home and suggest the new acquaintances step slightly outside the bounds of traditional hotel entertainment, illegally take a car, and dash to the wild coast. There they drink champagne, grill sausages, and party so hard that James volunteers to drive the bohemian crowd back instead of the thoroughly inebriated Alban. On the night road, his virtue and two tons of vintage convertible run over and kill some local peasant.
The laws in La Tolqa have not yet reached the democratic level of the island's guests, and for murder (even unintentional), death at the hands of the victim's closest relative is prescribed. But there is a nuance. Thanks to murky diplomatic agreements and the country's tourism development program, foreign offenders are provided with a full-fledged clone for a certain sum. It remembers everything, understands everything, and is subject to execution instead of its owner.
Thus, witnessing his own death, James opens a new facet of permissive pleasure. He loses his passport, sends his slightly shocked wife home, and joins Gabi and her company of deranged capitalists. Together they plunge into an alcoholic-narcotic bender, commit dark forbidden acts, and then voluptuously watch as their clones are executed by grim policemen.
«Modern infinity pools with optical illusions are typically complex to construct and expensive to execute»
Brandon Cronenberg continues his descent into the depths of trauma and the corporeal, following in his father's footsteps. 'Infinity Pool' is his third feature film. All the visionary's calling cards stick out with bloody corners from the body parts of his new creation. The main hero still faces a choice between old and new, purification and oblivion, sparkling secret knowledge and a return to gray mundanity.
Cronenberg Jr. speaks the language of images and visions. Beams, pipes, and corners of La Tolqa flash before the eyes; the camera of Cronenberg's longtime collaborator and masterful art-horror cinematographer Karim Hussain performs spectacular acrobatics. The film's spaces hurl geometry at the viewer's face, and James catches hallucinations every forty minutes of screen time. The geography within scenes is deliberately disrupted here, bringing the viewing experience closer to the disoriented state of the main character. And, of course, complex dreamlike episodes are in place, with explosions of color, light, and otherworldly content.
«For the correct functioning and to obtain the expected optical effect from infinity pools, it is necessary to use special elements»
All this visual riot would be incomplete without the major figures of contemporary genre cinema – Mia Goth and Alexander Skarsgård. Goth here reaches another peak of mastery. She effortlessly switches the mask of an adultery-prone, weary-of-mundanity resort zone, an awkward fan of a dubious writer, to the fierce visage of an infernal beast – a guide of a weak soul into the seventh hell. Closer to the finale, her acting evokes a genuine surge of adrenaline-fueled hatred. And Skarsgård once again (after 'The Northman') proves how virtuosically he commands the psychophysics of his characters. James is a relaxed, insecure wimp, up to his neck in the swamp of idleness and mediocrity. The way he transforms throughout the film, equally physically and psychologically, is undoubtedly the credit of the talented Swede.
'The Pool' will take a worthy place in the filmography of Cronenberg Jr., but it still falls short of cult status. The director has already distanced himself enough from his father and found his own voice. His vision of body horror implies a different, so to speak, more visceral, psychological level. At the same time, Cronenberg changes many traditional elements of this subgenre in the spirit of a peculiar magical realism. Freud, Jung, and Lacan are his best friends, though, until they start getting too clever. And in terms of social subtext, 'The Pool' can even be compared to the recent . Only where Östlund greasily mocks capitalism, Cronenberg acts both more subtly and more radically. Namely – he cuts, stabs, and throws a good old orgy.
In an age of censorship based on tolerance across all possible and impossible parameters, cinema free from prejudice and light in its comedic nature and openness is worth its weight in gold.
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