I think then David can be extremely proud of his son Brandon Cronenberg, a not-so-young Canadian filmmaker who seems to have decided to continue where his father left off sometime in the eighties. Although Brandon Cronenberg started to gather a following of admirers with the previous two films, “Antiviral” from 2012 and “Possessor” from 2020, “Infinity Pool” filmed in a Canadian-Croatian co-production is definitely his best film so far. It is a brutal combination of body horror and satire on the world of the rich and famous, which goes a few steps further compared to similar recent films that dealt with the same subject, such as “Triangle of Sadness” or “The Menu”.
“Infinity Pool” is a movie made for the midnight sections of the festival, a shocking and brutal satire with the potential for cult status, in which the viewer is equally disturbed by the superficial violence that we see, but also the deeper one that Cronenberg actually wants to convey with this film. I assume that many have asked themselves the question of what a world in which everything is allowed would look like and how individuals would use that ultimate type of freedom that would release them from responsibility for what they have done. This question is also asked by Brandon Cronenberg in his film about extreme hedonism, which is also a complete degradation of humanity and everything that we understand as morality and ethics.
James Foster (Alexander Skarsgard) is a young writer who achieved relative success with his debut novel a few years ago, but since then he has been in a creative block. It’s fortunate that apparently he married well and that his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman) has rich parents, and this young couple went on vacation to a resort in a fictional country called Li Tolqa. Although the film was shot in and around Šibenik, this grotesque country fortunately (yet) has no similarities with Croatia, and it is obviously a brutal and primitive dictatorship in relation to which North Korea also acts as a land of freedom. But a country like Li Tolqa has obviously decided to improve its image and open up to tourists, and for them there are luxurious and beautiful resorts, which, admittedly, are surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by the army.
What happens outside of these fenced areas for foreigners, these mostly rich and well-heeled guests don’t bother too much, but not by his own will, James will soon learn what kind of country it is. After he and Em meet another couple of guests there, the rich architect Alban and his young wife, the actress Gabi (Mia Goth after X and Pearl is trying to get the title of queen of horror, and by God she’s doing well!), despite the warnings, they head outside the resort , and this will lead to a complete disaster. Since “Infinity Pool” is one of those movies that is best to dive into with as little prior knowledge as possible about the plot itself, I will refrain from making any connections. Except I will add that James will soon realize that there is a circle of rich, hung and deranged rich sadomasochists out there who have figured out Li Tolqe’s loophole, and she lets them do pretty much whatever they want.
Of course, if they have enough money to pay for it all, and all that James will experience there and what we will see in this grotesque, wild, surreal, violent, hallucinatory, almost pornographic combination of horror and satire about the privileged caste and the limits of morality, something is beyond all reason. Of course, “Infinity Pool” will by no means be a film to everyone’s taste, because Cronenberg every now and then deliberately crosses the boundaries of good taste and intentionally shocks the viewer with what he does not try to hide, but shows quite explicitly. It is the film that seems to raise the question of whether hedonism even has limits and what a society in which everything is allowed would turn into.
Although it is clear that even today, fortunately, it respects some rules, laws and rules thanks to which civilization was born and thanks to which, among other things, we differ from other primates. But we have seen for ourselves what happens in catastrophic events such as wars, when all these laws cease to be valid and when the most extreme Darwinism prevails, in which the stronger and superior can do whatever they want. It is a film that shows in a sensational way that feeling of supremacy and superiority that seems to exist among those tourists from rich countries for whom everyone and everything is a consumable and who obviously can no longer have fun in a normal way. Only the complete degradation and negation of everything that we normally consider human and humane is what can satisfy their disturbed, sick, perverse needs, and all that graphic, visual violence actually symbolizes their rot and dehumanization.