Infinity Pool (2023)

Plot of Infinity Pool: Novelist James and his wife Em are staying in a resort in Li Tolqa. They are befriended by Gabi and her husband who persuade them to take a trip out into the country, despite the guidance that tourists should not leave the resort. On the way back James is driving their car when he runs down a native. They drive on, but it does not go away, and James is arrested and informed that he faces the death penalty. But all is not lost, he is told that if he pays a clone of him will be killed in his place, but he has to watch the victim’s eldest son killing the clone. It happens and James’s wife is freaked out and leaves the country. James is adopted by a group of people, including Gabi who are essentially crime tourists. They include him in their activity which is going out masked to attack people, which of course results in the execution of clones of them. They also engage in the taking of hallucinatory drugs, with resulting orgies. However when James tries to flee they take him back and it becomes evident that they are just playing with him.

Content: Well! Early on Gabi gives James a hand job, quite graphic and apparently not included in the American R release. Later there are sex orgies which may or may not be actually taking place, but that hardly matters. Plenty of drinking, and of course the ingestion of the  drug. The group go out wearing masks and kill people, then view the killing of their clones which exhibit the same emotions which anyone being killed would have. James is tricked into attacking clones of himself, and after killing one Gabi encourages him to suck her breast. Yet another film which should only be watched by adults.

A View: You have to accept the fact that it is possible for exact emotionally capable clones of people can be made, and that their only use would be to substitute for rich people condemned to death. I found I could manage that, but then when further clones of James were produced you have to wonder how that was achieved. Actually the point about the enclosed resort is well put, and I remember as a young man being on a ship loading cargo in Jamaica where just down the road was a resort, fenced, lit and landscaped while the Jamaicans lived in shacks. But despite this and the essentially positive reviews, it was just too unpleasant for me.

Fun Fact: Cronenberg suggested in an interview that he was inspired by a holiday taken in the Dominican Republic 20 years ago, where the resort existed in a sort of alternative reality amid the squalor which was the real country.