Brandon Cronenberg, a filmmaker who combines his creative practices and patrimonial legacy on storytelling under the same pot, is back with his latest feature, Infinity Pool. He strikes once again with a limit-pushing, terrifying thriller about the privileged, proving his cinema is present independent from the roots and can read on its own. He previously moved along the labyrinths of horror with shivering stealth in Antiviral (2012) and Possessor (2020), using the talent that his father, the maestro of body horror David Cronenberg consigned to him. But this time Brandon Cronenberg rolls up his sleeves to join the wave of satire that The White Lotus (2021- ) had lit its touch paper and several other projects like Triangle Of Sadness (2022) or The Menu (2022) had brought up over the past year.

Infinity Pool dwells in a luxury resort on a fictional island nation named La Tolqa, where his leads, Alexander Skarsgård and Mia Goth, take their places as the residents. Seeking inspiration to overcome his writer’s block, which held him for over six years, James Foster (Skarsgård) arranges a vacation on this island with his partner Em (Cleopatra Coleman), wishing to take the next step and become the writer he never-was. They come across Gabi (Goth) and Alban Bauer (Jalil Lespert), a Paris-Los Angeles-based couple, during the trip, where they witness an act, which also says a lot about the current state of the country.

Finding himself in the midst of an acquaintance with this so-called fan of his, James hesitantly drew by the Bauers’ presence, and in particular, by the bright shining eyes of Gabi. From now on, all the numerous decisions James has made to this point bind these individuals together, and he will eventually earn a ticket to the center of his ego, or what lies beneath. In this journey fuelled with sperm, blood, vomit, and numerous other human fluids, all the repressed feelings find a way to become apparent and come to light. Urgently using religious rituals, hallucinative visions, and hedonism-centered operations, they all look out desperately for more.

Cronenberg examines the human experience by laying the anatomy of man on his operation table. He specifically observes the ones that shift their lives into a gamble, with the money they possess, regardless of their jobs and personal lives. He uncloaks all his thoughts on these human beings one at a time, percolating them through the filters of horror and erotism. He girds a pistol, a bunch of meditative herbs, and the traditional deformed masks of La Tolqa, before putting his agenda filled with hallucinative orgies and duels of vengeance with the inner self in action.

He cuts each scene with the sparkling eyes of a child who recently got a set of various crayons and colors his storyboard as he fancies. The film becomes precisely prominent with its editing, showing the talent behind the editing desk, James Vandewater. This open world, where Mia Goth plays her manic game grandiosely, and the animal spirit her associates gained from their new prey narrow the lines that drawn down. The picture evolves into a frenzy, where the solid escape contrives from clicking all the buttons possible.

But Cronenberg doesn’t go as far as he intended when he tries to bounce his stones on the sea of La Tolqa, which he delicately examined on the beach and held in his palms carefully. After a few eye-catching bounces, all these stones he tried to make a show of returns to where they came from, sinking to the depths of the sea. While the emotions he triggered on the other side, all this pleasure, horror, and everything in between promised a cinema tour de force, the surface-level arguments that he crafted can not go deep, making anything but small ripples on the surface, and downgrading the satire into a dark travesty.

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