New & now: Infinity Pool
Come on in, degenerates, the water's fine!
There’s a little game I sometimes play when I watch a movie called “What Would I Do in This Situation?” It probably started when I first watched Pretty in Pink as a teenager, when the obvious answer at the time was choose Duckie instead of Blaine1. Then I applied it to horror movies, placing myself in the role of the Final Girl and trying to figure out how I would react to what’s going on. I never assume that I’m smarter or better than the characters - in fact, I’m quite certain that if I was in a horror movie I’d be killed almost immediately. Same as disaster movies — even before I developed a medical condition that requires prescription medication and regular doctor’s visits, I don’t think I’d make it very far into the apocalypse before dying of dysentery or breaking my leg and developing gangrene. It takes a lot of insight to understand that you’d be a useless sack of shit in a crisis, and, baby, I have loads of insight.
ANYWAY, with some movies asking “What would I do in this situation?” leads to needing to sit quietly in a darkened room for a little while. Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool is one of those films, designed to force the viewer to ask themselves not if they would take advantage of such a situation (because virtually everyone would), but how far they would go with it. Like Possessor, Cronenberg’s last film (albeit not quite as intensely gruesome), the horror is in its characters gradually, willingly losing their humanity.
James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) is on holiday with his wife, Em (Cleopatra Coleman), in a fictitious country that’s a strange combination of island paradise and Eastern European slum. They’re traveling on Em’s dime because James, a writer whose sole publishing effort was a failure, has no source of income, and their relationship at this point seems powered mostly by resentment.
James unexpectedly encounters a fan of his writing (perhaps the only one) in Gabi (Mia Goth), who’s staying at the resort with her husband, Alban (Jalil Lespert). Despite Em’s reservations, she and James spend time with the other couple, going off the resort property with them even though it’s against regulations. After drinking all day (not to mention getting an aggressive handy-j from Gabi), James attempts to drive back to the resort, but accidentally hits and kills someone. Gabi and Alban talk him out of reporting the accident, claiming that the local police are corrupt.
He’s arrested anyway, and Detective Thresh (Thomas Kretschmann) informs him that the penalty for killing someone in a car accident is immediate execution2 without a trial. However, there is an unusual loophole that’s only available (naturally) to the wealthy: for a considerable sum of money, you can be cloned, and your clone will be executed in your place. The only catch is that you have to watch it happen, and your clone does not go quietly. Imprinted with your memories and personality, it will react to its own demise presumably in the exact same way you yourself would react.
While Em is horrified by the experience, James is fascinated by it. After returning to the resort (with the ashes of his clone in a decorative urn as a sort of souvenir from the police department), he encounters Gabi again, who tells him that she and Alban went through the cloning experience as well, more than once. In fact, they’re part of a group of rich freaks who return to the island year after year specifically so they can commit whatever depraved acts they want and get out of being held accountable for them by going through the cloning process over and over. The fact that every time they go through it it seems to chip away a little more at their humanity is of little consequence, because it’s simply far too much fun to wreak havoc on the locals and then return to their normal, privileged lives like nothing happened.
Sending Em (who wisely wants nothing to do with this) back to the U.S., James joins Gabi and the others on their crime spree, breaking into houses, assaulting people, committing theft, getting into gunfights and indulging in a weird, incense-like drug before having a psychedelic orgy. They treat the sight of themselves being executed as part of the show, cheering over the dramatic attempt to escape one of James’s clones makes like they’re watching Raiders of the Lost Ark. James himself (if he’s even still the real him, and not replaced at some point by a clone) struggles between enjoying the consequence-free fun, and wondering if there’s any point he can turn back from it.
Say what you will about Brandon Cronenberg, but he doesn’t waste time with subtlety. These characters are all irredeemable monsters, and if you don’t get that, there’s a scene where they all wear masks that make them look as grotesque as they already are on the inside. We already know that the very wealthy don’t believe they should be held accountable for anything (and rarely are, so who can blame them for thinking that), and Infinity Pool merely gives that a horror/sci-fi spin. If this kind of technology existed in real life, no one who could afford it would ever so much as pay a traffic ticket.
Speaking of technology, Cronenberg also doesn’t waste time really explaining anything, such as why an island whose only source of income appears to be a single resort that’s not even open all year round has this capability, or how it works. James just steps into a room that appears to be filled with tomato soup, and then his clone is born. Infinity Pool isn’t a movie about technology though, but rather philosophy, and confronts the viewer with the question of what would you attempt to get away with, knowing you wouldn’t get in trouble for it3?
Similar to a line in season 1 of HBO’s True Detective, in which Matthew McConaughey says “If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then that person is a piece of shit,” it uncomfortably posits that it’s not morals and civility that stop us from doing bad things, but rather just the fear of what happens if we get caught. What if that fear was eliminated?
While Alexander Skarsgård shows an admirable fearlessness as James (not everyone can get on all fours and bark and growl like a dog and not look completely stupid), the real star of the show here is Mia Goth, who gets to speak with her actual accent, and sounds at times like an R-rated Veruca Salt. In one scene, while taunting James, she shrieks “What are you doing, James? Haaaaaaaaaaah?” at a tone loud and shrill enough to strip the paint off a Buick. As with X and Pearl, her youthful face and overt sexuality are a jarring but effective combination. Gabi is leading James down the road to Hell, giggling like a girl on her way to spring break in Tampa. Because that’s all this horror and debauchery is to her and the others, just a bit of fun, a well-deserved break from their oh-so-busy-lives, and the oppression of having to follow rules and laws like the little people. Doesn’t that sound nice? Would you turn that down?
Now, the sophisticated woman knows that the correct answer is choose neither Duckie or Blaine, have blistering hate sex with Steff, and then live happily ever after with Iona.
We eventually learn that very nearly everything here is punishable by death, which makes you wonder how the island has enough people to run the resort.
Personally, I’d give bank robbery a try.
Excellent review!