Movie Review: Infinity Pool

4 stars out of 5

I can imagine Mike White handing this in as a stand-alone episode of White Lotus and getting immediately fired and banned by HBO. In Infinity Pool, writer/director Brandon Cronenberg gives us his own version of an existentially bored couple at a tropic resort, but because of that last name, you can probably guess this movie is pretty fucked up.

And can I just say, you know you’re old when you think, “Oh a movie by the son of one of my favorite directors; let’s see what the kid is up to” — and then you find out the “kid” is 43 years old. Sheesh!

OK, where were we, ah yes, tropical resort. Alexander “Please Let Me Get the Little Circle Above the A on the First Try” Skarsgård (editor’s note: not even close) is James Foster, an author with writer’s block hoping to find inspiration on a vacation funded by his supportive-but-don’t-push-me wife Em. They start hanging out with another couple, one half of which is flirty, alluring Gabi. She’s played by Mia Goth who in a real-life Cronenbergian twist, has been impregnated by Shia LaBeouf. Yick!

After a day and night of couple carousing, James finds himself in trouble with the law. And outside the gates of the resort, there is some rough island justice! (Police HQ looks a bit like the rundown government buildings in Papa Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future; it was interesting to see that this movie was filmed in Hungary and Croatia.) Gabi assures James that it can all be taken care of, swept away, which we soon learn is because everybody has a price.

Plot-wise, I’m going to stop right there, as to not spoil the fun. Maybe “fun” isn’t the right word? No, there is certainly some fun, and some dark laughs. Very dark. (Though not as dark as that chocolate my buddy brought back from Germany. Too dark! I digress.) But there is also some wonderfully disturbing content, insane visuals, hallucinatory freakouts, ultraviolence, scary shit, all dancing around some heady ethical questions to a soundtrack by the great Tim Hecker.

I was finding the movie really gripping… then I got a little bored by the “excess”… then Croney pushes the Messed-Up Meter deep into the red and totally won me back. All I can say is, David Cronenberg must be one proud papa.