Infinity Pool (film)

Infinity Pool is a 2023 science fiction body horror film written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg. The film stars Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, and Cleopatra Coleman. Set in the fictional country of Li Tolqa, it follows struggling novelist James Foster (Skarsgård) and his wife Em (Coleman), a couple on vacation at a seaside resort who, after meeting another couple and having dinner with them, discover the country's dark culture.

Cronenberg started developing the project in 2019, with production later being pushed back to 2021. Much of the cast joined the project that year and filming took place primarily in Budapest and Šibenik.

Infinity Pool premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2023, and was theatrically released in Canada on January 27, 2023, to critical acclaim, with particular praise for Goth's performance.

Novelist James Foster and his wife Em spend time at a resort in the fictional seaside country of Li Tolqa, where a local festival is underway. The couple's chronic marital strife is exacerbated when Gabi, a fan of the only novel James has published, invites them to spend time with her and her husband Alban. The four have dinner and spend the next day driving in the countryside, even though they have been warned that tourists are to remain on the resort grounds at all times.

At a beach, as James urinates behind a tree, Gabi unexpectedly grabs him from behind and gives him a handjob, which he enjoys. After a long day of sunbathing and cooking, the tourists drunkenly drive back to their hotel. En route, the lights of the car begin to flicker in the pitch black night, and James accidentally hits a local man, killing him. Gabi insists that they cannot call the police as the country is corrupt and they will not be safe.

The next day, James is arrested and told that the penalty for his crime is death at the hand of his victim's firstborn son. However, the country has a unique system of justice reserved for foreign nationals due to diplomatic agreement, whereby the guilty, for a hefty fee, can be cloned and have their duplicates killed in their place. James, who married into money, pays the fee to escape execution. However, as part of the deal, he must watch the execution of his clone. While Em is horrified by the entire affair and wants to leave immediately, James is titillated by the spectacle and doesn't share her urgency. He tells Em that his passport is missing and encourages her to return to the United States.

James extends his stay by a week and encounters Gabi and Alban again. They introduce him to a small group of Western tourists who all have been convicted of serious crimes and have paid to watch their doubles killed. The group mounts a robbery in the home of the resort owner which turns into a shootout. The next day, the whole group watches their clones' group execution. Em leaves the country in disgust, finding James unrecognizable. Over the next several days, the group encourages James to transform into a libertine criminal, encouraging him to kill locals, engage in intoxicated orgies (as he uses a local hallucinogen with Gabi, it's unclear how much of the orgy is real), and abuse other resort guests.

One night James is tricked into brutalizing a clone of himself he had been led to believe was the detective who initially arrested him. In a moment of clarity and panic, James retrieves the passport he had hidden in order to stay in Li Tolqa and attempts to flee. However, the tourist group abducts him from the bus transporting him to the airport. Gabi reveals that she finds him pathetic, that she never read his book, and that he was targeted by the group, which is abusing him for their own amusement. The accident James and Em had with Gabi and Alban made their plan easier to implement, but if not for the accident, they would have found a way to get him in trouble. James runs off into a nearby wilderness, but Gabi shoots him in the leg.