The Big Picture

  • Infinity Pool shows that we can all become monsters if given the chance, even those who believe themselves morally upright.
  • Wealth and power can potentially allow the rich to indulge in depravity without facing any consequences.
  • Infinity Pool explores the corruption of violence, showing how easily humanity can be lost to darkness.

What does it mean to lose touch with your humanity? Does it mean becoming cruel and leaving behind any compassion? Did you even really have any moral characteristics to begin with or was it just an act that would fall apart when you got the first taste of something different? These are the questions that are posed in writer-director Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool which, rather definitively, provides a series of increasingly bleak and brutal answers to each one of them. Similar in many ways to his previous film, 2020’s Possessor, it is a hallucinogenic meditation on violence and the parts of ourselves that we lose when we become bathed in the blood of those we destroy. Its central characters, rather than be repulsed by this, become drawn to getting more and more for them to consume.

Infinity Pool Film Poster
Infinity Pool
R
Horror
Sci-Fi

James and Em Foster are enjoying an all-inclusive beach vacation in the fictional island of La Tolqa, when a fatal accident exposes the resort's perverse subculture of hedonistic tourism, reckless violence and surreal horrors.

Release Date
January 27, 2023
Director
Brandon Cronenberg
Cast
Alexander Skarsgard , Mia Goth , Cleopatra Coleman , Jalil Lespert
Runtime
117 minutes

What the Hell Is 'Infinity Pool' About?

This all begins and ends with the struggling writer James (Alexander Skarsgård) who is on a trip with his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman) to a fictional resort in Eastern Europe. He is there seeking inspiration as he hasn’t written a book in years. Though he certainly finds it, none of it is in the way he expected. The troubles begin when he encounters Gabi (Mia Goth) who invites James and his wife to accompany her on a trip with her husband outside the resort. She sufficiently strokes his ego by saying how much she likes his book to make him overlook any potential concerns. On the way back from the trip, James offers to drive as everyone else is either tired or drunk. He subsequently accidentally hits a farmer with the car and kills him before fleeing. The next day, he is arrested and told he will be executed. However, he can pay to have a double created to take his place. The only thing is that he and Em will have to watch the execution. Where she is horrified, James is mesmerizing by this moment. When they go back to the hotel, and she desperately wants to leave, he can’t seem to find his passport. We later learn this was a facade and James actually hid it, so he would have an excuse to stay.

He then joins Gabi and her merry group of wealthy murderers who all terrorize the vacation destination with the knowledge that they will never be held accountable. We witness them all applauding and cheering as their doubles are executed at the same time. It is all a game where they can be as violent and depraved as they want. Their wealth grants them the power to do anything to anyone. We see James is intoxicated with this new life. Once Em leaves to get away from it all, he becomes even worse than he ever was before.

Related
Where Does ‘Infinity Pool’ Take Place?
Can you actually visit La Tolqa?

That is, until he is tricked into beating up and nearly killing a double of himself with his own two hands. Initially, this is a line that he will not cross, and he tries to flee from the rest of the group. This proves to be futile when Gabi tracks him down and gets him to brutally murder his double by smashing his head in. When she and then everyone else leave on their respective flights, James turns back to stay behind at the vacated resort with the rain pouring down. He has been forever changed, and can no longer return home. After all he has discovered of himself, James would rather be alone with the worst parts of who has become than be anywhere else.

Life WIthout Consequences For the Rich

Similar to how Possessor ended with a character realizing they no longer had any connection to their past selves due to the corrupting power of violence, Infinity Pool sees Cronenberg adding a layer to his thesis by showing how it is the rich who indulge in this without consequence. They are all the true “animals” that they keep referring to everyone else as. What distinguishes James from Gabi and everyone else is that, while he initially tries to flee, he's incapable of shedding this version of himself. His only hesitation came from him not wanting to get his hands dirty by harming a person that closely resembled himself. It was not compassion that gave him pause. Rather, it was hubris. James never had any qualms that prevented him from hurting others, meaning that the extra step of killing his double was merely an acknowledgment of his true nature.

For others, it was about letting off steam so that they could go back to their lives of decadence. All of them are sickening, but James is the one who becomes most corrupted by it. The fact that he didn’t come from wealth and was instead living off of Em’s family money makes this even more unsettling as it shows anyone is capable of getting lost to the darkness. James has been reborn in gore and violence, down to him even nursing off Gabi’s breast, which is covered in the blood of his double he had just destroyed. When we see him sitting alone in the rain in the final shot, there is a possibility that Cronenberg is trying to hint that he may be actually desperately attempting to cleanse himself of all that he has done up until now.

This potentially redemptive idea is compromised by the place which he goes back to. Rather than going home, he has returned to the location where whatever soul or humanity he had was lost. No matter how much he tries, there is no "getting clean," as he is more like the rich monsters than he would have ever wanted to admit. For all the ways he believed himself to be a good person, James was capable of cruelty beyond measure. All it took was a little push.

Infinity Pool is currently streaming on Hulu in the U.S.

Watch on Hulu