Review: Alexander Skarsgård And Mia Goth Are Unnaturally Born Killers In Brandon Cronenberg's 'Infinity Pool'

Sexy people doing terrible things! There are lots of reasons to go to the movies but those are the best ones, and Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool knows it. It not only knows it, it shows it—it does star Alexander Skarsgård and Mia Goth after all, so that is the movie telling you its agenda right up front. Both actors that we’ve previously seen writhe naked while covered in blood, it definitely makes sense that these two would eventually hook up cinematically with Cronenberg, whose last name might be familiar but it’s his middle name—Danger!—that you should take note of.

Okay Brandon Cronenberg’s middle name isn’t literally “Danger” (as far as I know—show us the receipts, Brandon!) but it might as well be, given his predilection for it—no doubt instilled at an early age in the baby carriage visiting the set of The Fly or some other sexy horror masterpiece his Papa David was busy delivering. It must be weird having your last name be an adjective before you’re born, and no doubt Brandon’s felt a lot to live up to, becoming a director himself—like a baker or a candlestick-maker’s son carrying on the family business it’s gotta be a lot of pressure.

Not to wade into “the Nepobaby discourse”—to paraphrase Jennifer Connolly, the what? But Infinity Pool actually has a good joke on that end, so I feel permission granted. Cronenberg and Skarsgård are both noted recipients of those hereditary benefits after all, and I think it’s telling that the latter here is playing the on-screen stand-in for the former—not that any one of us wouldn’t take half of a split-second to say “Alexander Skarsgård” if given the chance to choose our cinematic stand-in. I mean why not be played by a Nordic God whose shoulders are so high and so broad the screen can barely contain them?

Skarsgård isn’t literally playing Cronenberg here—it’s more of a Hitchcock casting Cary Grant as his idealized dream version situation. Skarsgård is literally playing an author named James Foster, a broad-shouldered trophy husband who wrote one book six years ago and has spent every second since feeling marginally guilty that he hasn’t written a second one while spending the fortune of his extremely wealthy and extremely beautiful wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman).

That’s what has brought them to the exotic and dangerous (and fictional) tropical island of La Tolqa, where they’re enjoying the gorgeous beaches from a resort surrounded by barbed wire; all the better to keep the local riff and the local raff on the right side of their tracks. James says he needs inspiration for his book, and those fifty-dollar daiquiris might just be the ones that push him over for real, for really real, this time!

Of course, inspiration comes in many forms, and speaking from personal experience Mia Goth has spent the last several years becoming one of my primaries. (Pearl hive rise and holla!) Here she is Gaby, a gorgeous eyebrow-less creature who introduces herself to James on the beach one day as his number one fan. (Always a good sign, that.) She’s there with her partner Alban (Jalil Lespert), an architect whose main contribution to the field seems to have been a hotel infinity pool built above a bar to maximize the perv factor, and the two couples hit it off pretty quickly. So much so that by the next day they’ve decided to take a field trip outside of the fences—to really see how the locals do it. What better inspiration than extraordinary poverty, after all?

Of course, it’s not long before it all goes terribly wrong—if you’ve seen either of Brandon Cronenberg’s previous films (those would be Antiviral and Possessor, and I recommend you do) then you know he’s got a stiffy for psychedelia; while the “Body Horror” that his father’s films became synonymous with is firmly on display, Brandon’s movies have seemed more focused on the breakdown of the brain itself. The flesh follows.

That said Infinity Pool is for my buck the least head-scratchingest of Brandon’s trilogy of films—the rules for what is happening once things start happening (and I am not going to ruin that fun) are laid out pretty cleanly early on, and Cronenberg sticks to them. While also adding some stylishly pornographic flourishes for good measure, of course. And why not? It’s all in the name of family entertainment!

This brings us back to Brandon’s not-middle middle name. Infinity Pool feels genuinely dangerous in ways that other recent one-percenter satires like The Menu and Triangle of Sadness never quite muster (and I say that as a fan of both of those movies). It taps into the perverse vibe of those 1980s erotic thrillers and updates them for our fresh new porn snuff millennia—you will long for the auld-lang-syne innocence of Glenn Close boiling a bunny by the time Mia Goth is through ritually humiliating Alexander. Speaking of, both actors put the word “game” to shame—as a pair of unnaturally born killers they dive in with enough poison-tipped vigor for twenty movie-stars, and tear up the hotel room like ye olde rock stars of past. Sexy people doing terrible things, dammit! I want some more, please.