Infinity Pool explained – Signal Horizon

Even with a small number of people, I feel comfortable saying that someone with the last name of Cronenberg is a trip. While I remain a huge fan of David Cronenberg’s Weird works, I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable with the bleak, violent world of body horror that has come to define his filmmaking. Infinity Pool’s latest feature his son Brandon ((who has become an author in his own right) borrows heavily from that aesthetic as he introduces a more open discussion of class, wealth, and rights. Spoilers ahead for Infinity Pool Explained.

Perhaps the most direct interpretation one could find within Infinity Pool is the discussion of wealth, power and responsibility. Em (Cleopatra Coleman) and James (Alexander Skarsgård) are vacationing at a resort in Latoka, a developing country that appears to be a fusion of a Caribbean island and a Baltic resort. The government is violent, scary and poor, but the resorts along the beaches are flocking with rich people who want to enjoy a caged paradise. James and Em befriend another couple played by Mia Goth and Jalil Lespert.

Over dinner, we get our first real clue about Cronenberg’s objectives. The accents given to us by both Goth and Lespert seem to be a complicated blend of French, English and Swiss. Infinity Pool doesn’t want to sue America alone, which would have been the easy route. Both Goth and Lespert are undoubtedly the focal points of malice, and as they force the action, Cronenberg wants to make it clear that a wealthy, vicious psychopath is a symptom of the West, not just the United States.

Infinity Pool and a critique of wealth

James is clearly interested in Gabi. When she gives him a scope (as in real life, that’s the only way to describe it) while they’re on a field trip, James seems to be pulled into her bizarre web. On his way back from that drunken day trip to a beach outside the compound, James punches and kills a farmer walking down the street. He does it accidentally, but is still criminally guilty. Alban and Gabi convince Em and James they will handle it and they make it back to the resort.

Later the next day, the police come to arrest James. At the station, the main plot reveals itself. To make amends with the local farming family, the police are going to make a copy of James. After they make a copy, the farmer’s son kills the doppelgänger. That doppelgänger will emerge as an exact replica of James. He will have the memories, feelings and identity of James. The transaction has a price. Once James dives into the ATM, the deed is done. We watch as James and Em observe the brutal demise of the twins. Everything for one price. It’s a disturbing scene that manages to scare Em and James right out.

Money and consequences in Infinity Pool

When James returns, the couple pack up to leave. But James can’t find his passport, so he has to go to the reception to arrange a few extra nights. Gabi and a larger group of friends drink and enjoy the resort. They convince James to party with them and end up going on a killing spree themselves. They discuss how they’ve been to Latoka before and call each other zombies.

It is a curious sentence full of meaning. It leads us to believe that they have used the clone-out-of-jail-free map before. After the night ends, they are all arrested again for a botched burglary. A handful of locals are killed in the theft. We get to see them all slit their throats, but not before the camera pans to see the “real group” cheering and sitting in the stands. They seem to react like fans of a sporting event. They are enthralled and thrilled by the carnage of their twins. Their consequences are never bigger than their pockets and the exploitation of the indigenous population continues unabated.

Q and the sign of elite cruelty

It’s hard not to relate to the vast and elaborate Q-Anon conspiracy. If Infinity Pool’s elite harvested a drug from their victims’ brains, we’d have all the elements of the conspiracy, but instead Gabi introduces a native drug to James that she tells him is a hallucinogen and an aphrodisiac. One cannot fail to make connections here with drug tourism in Central and South America. Westerners like to take sacred experiences and turn them into sex parties. That’s what we do, I think.

As James becomes more deeply involved in the group’s illegal activities, we see the reach of their money extending to cloning itself. After the group convinces James that a police detective is actually the one holding the keys to his new passport, the group kidnaps the officer. However, we realize that they have created an additional doppelgänger of James to kill and torture. It’s unclear whether this is a right-of-way or more sadism.

The elite hazing ritual in Infinity Pool

The movie reminds you over and over that James is only in this scenario because Em is rich. Her father is a media mogul and James is mostly a failed writer. He’s not really elite. He is still a victim, albeit with a little more freedom of choice. The movie takes on an almost hazing-like feel towards the end, with the group demanding more violence and gore, leading to an absolutely brutal fight between James and his doppelgänger.

James wins (well in both cases). The end of the movie features an absolutely bizarre moment where James crawls over to Gabi to have Gabi wipe blood on her chest so James can suck it like a newborn would. The symbols are significant and clear. Having shed all the empathy and compassion of his past life, James has now carved out a space for himself in this elite community. He has literally been reborn and now feeds on the breast of the mother who gave birth to him. We learn the next day that James has hidden the passport himself and is going home with the rest of the group. In the end, however, he cannot return to the preserved world of being nobody with someone else’s money. The final shot shows James lying on a chair in an abandoned resort as the rainy season begins.

Kill your darlings or they will kill you

James is an author, creator and artist. It’s almost impossible not to draw comparisons to what Cronenberg is trying to say about being an artist. The wisdom that authors should be willing to kill their loved ones has been around for centuries. The Song of Ice and Fire is a testament to how successful that plot device can be. Infinity Pool not only kills its darlings, but kills its artist again and again. In one of the film’s final shots, James packs the urns containing his clone’s ashes into his suitcase as if they were another souvenir from the vacation.

Cronenberg seems to be obsessed with the idea that different versions of an artist have to die to provide the space to grow and experience new things. This older version stays with us and occasionally demands its own blood sacrifice. The battle with these versions of ourselves seems constant and in perhaps the most bleak of all possible interpretations, the most empathetic, caring and compassionate versions always die.

Related