Brandon Cronenberg proves once again to be a chip off the old block in his lurid and vertiginous third feature. Like his father, body horror pioneer David, he fillets his tale of the idle rich at play on an exotic island idyl with a surgeon's knife and then a butcher’s cleaver.
The current vogue for "eat the rich" narratives seen in White Lotus and Green Onion: A Knives Out Mystery screams into life in this relentless psychodrama of weird - very weird - sex, depravity and close quarters mutilation.
Watch our interview with Mia Goth and Alexander Skarsgård
Alexander Skarsgård plays failed novelist Paul Foster who is wrestling with writer's block and is holidaying on a fictional island of La Tolqa with his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman). Their relationship is strained by Paul’s anger at himself for not coming up with the goods for his second book so when he randomly meets a group of overly friendly strangers (including Mia Goth as the mysterious Gaby and her frankly creepy older husband older husband, Alban), he may have found the inspiration he is looking for.
However, it doesn’t quite end up with a drunken conga line and karaoke to ABBA at 4am in the hotel bar. Instead, after a forbidden trip outside their closely guarded holiday resort, the unsuspecting couple are swept into a demimonde of amorality climaxing in a macabre legal procedure exercised by the island’s fascistic police state that sees them literally dicing with death as a form of voyeurism.
Skarsgård does well as the detached, self-obsessed novelist but all eyes will be on the magnetic Mia Goth, who has carved her name out as star a new star of horror, as the innocent abroad who turns out to be a predatory femme fatale.
Infinity Pool fair drips with the macabre and the taboo and while it quickly loses any satirical edge, Cronenberg’s Ballardian carnival of debauchery is a compelling watch.
The 1% are on the menu here. You’ll need a strong stomach.
Alan Corr @CorrAlan2
