I was very excited to go and see Infinity Pool and managed to do so before it ended its theatrical run at my theatre. I have liked the work of writer/director Brandon Cronenberg (also a fan of his dad!) before and the trailers looked very interesting. I went into this expecting a messed up and weird story and I had even heard that more than a few people had walked out of it as it was so disturbing!
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The Movie Review
As well as being from a filmmaker that I like, Infinity Pool also had a great cast. Alexander Skarsgard (Godzilla vs. Kong), Cleopatra Coleman, and the awesome Mia Goth (X, Pearl) are all actors that I like, and getting to see Mia Goth go nuts is always going to be a fun time. The movie on paper should have been something that I loved, but it, unfortunately, was not.
Look, you know with Brandon Cronenberg, you are getting weird, but Infinity Pool to me felt like it was weird and disturbing for the sake of being so. Do not get me wrong, there are some very messed up situations and scenes in this movie and the actors do a great job of pulling it all off.
However, it felt like a kind of pretentious nonsense movie to me that just did not have enough depth and went from one strange, violent, or sexual scene to the next without anything to get me really invested or care a great deal about what was going on. On the flip side of this, I have a couple of friends who have said that they loved this and that it was a masterpiece so it does appear to be a movie that is dividing opinions.
The plot of the movie does have a rather interesting premise. We have James who is a writer and his wife Em who are on a vacation. James and Em meet another couple Gabi and Alban, Gabi being a fan of James’s work. They strike up a weird friendship and you can tell right away that Gabi is a bit off, Mia Goth at her crazy best here!
An accident happens and we find out that the place they are staying is far from this seaside paradise. It turns out that people can come to this place, commit horrible crimes, and then be sentenced to death for them. You may wonder why the heck would anyone want to do this, but this place has another secret.
People can be cloned! This means that wealthy and deranged people can come here, commit terrible crimes, clone themselves, and watch their clone be executed for it! It is a messed up premise and as I write this, I cannot believe that this is a movie I did not thoroughly enjoy.
They try to have a bit of mystery going on here. For example, is a person the real them or a clone? Are people losing a bit of their humanity each time they are cloned? Who really runs this place and what is its purpose? However, while I think it all sounds interesting, it never grabbed me at all and as I said, felt like it was more interesting going from one extreme scene, be it violent or sexual to the next.
I did not hate Infinity Pool, but I certainly did not love it. I feel like this is a movie I am going to have to watch again and give a second chance to. As I said, I have friends and I have read rave reviews from other people. Yet, I have also read many reviews from people like me who did not click with the movie and not because it was too “extreme”.
