Brandon Cronenberg’s new film serves up another slice of that luxury fear-porn that we’ve had on TV’s The White Lotus and Succession, or Triangle of Sadness in the movies. Here, the trappings and appurtenances of the leisured super-rich might turn out to be just the design features of a prison. Infinity Pool is set in a super-exclusive vacation resort, a razor-wired compound of pampering on an otherwise poverty-stricken fictional island – but the place turns out to have Hotel California-style rules about the respective times available for checking out and leaving.
Infinity Pool is part body horror, part folk horror, with twisty hints of JG Ballard and Ian McEwan; it also features a tremendous turn from Mia Goth, who is currently ruling our cinema screens elsewhere in Ti West’s shocker Pearl. There are some intriguingly nasty ideas, along with nice performances from Goth and from her male lead, Alexander Skarsgård. But after a great opening, there are some shark-jumping moments in the second and third acts, and the doppelganger idea is a bit tired. Getting the same actor to play the two parts is really something that should be confined to film students’ graduation projects or TikTok videos.
