Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: C-
Cinematography: C
Editing: C+

There comes a moment in Infinity Pool when Mia Goth’s Gabi, who has been toying with Alexander Skarsgård’s vacationing author James all along, pulls out a bad review of James’s one published novel, which did not sell well. She reads it aloud to him, emphasizing a passage that leans on how pretentious the novel was.

She might as well have been describing this movie, which spends all of its time attempting to convince us it has something to say while it actually says nothing.

This is a film by Brandon Cronenberg, son of David Cronenberg, who released his own subpar movie last summer. I guess you could say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, except that with Infinity Pool, Brandon elicits very good performances in a story that fails to justify itself. I spent two hours watching this film, not bored per se, but keeping an open mind: maybe something will eventually tie everything together impressively. No such luck. The movie ends with a narrative thud. It’s not the greatest thing when a movie ends and you just think, That’s it?

It could be argued that the most interesting thing about this movie is that it features an orgy with people wearing deeply disturbing, disfigured-face masks. Except that the orgy is both an overly stylized fever dream of a scene and somehow still a bit dull.

Here’s the potential in the premise of Infinity Pool: James leaves the resort compound against the advice of the people who run it, or an excursion out in the fictional European island country they are visiting. When he accidentally hits a local man with his car and kills him, they discover the country has a tradition of a family’s firstborn son killing anyone who kills a member of their family—apparently for any reason, accident or not. But to maintain their tourism industry, they have this incredible side hustle where they make “doubles” (basically clones, though that word is never used in the script) to be sacrificed. The double is given all the same memories, and for reasons never even close to explained, the original people must be present to witness. What must that be like, then, to see a copy of your own self murdered? This is the kind of existential theme that is the makings of a rich text, for which Brandon Cronenberg offers no useful illumination.

Instead, we get Mia Goth as Gabi, an effectively creepy and manipulative woman from the start, beginning with one of the oddest hand job scenes ever put onscreen. You want to see some urine and then some semen splatter onto some beach pebbles? This is your movie!

James’s wife, also on this vacation and the breadwinner as the daughter of a successful publisher who we are told detests James, is played by Cleopatra Coleman. She has a notable presence through about half the movie, until she decides she’s had enough of the wild shit happening in this country and up and goes home. Coleman is good in a thankless role that completely wastes her. There is never even any sexual tension, as evidently Em remains oblivious to Gabi’s advances.

I knew there would be some kind of plot twist in Infinity Pool, and it comes along maybe three quarters of the way through the story. It’s disappointingly minor as twists go, and not particularly satisfying. Infinity Pool offers plenty of sex and violence and depravity, I guess maybe as commentary on the excesses of wealth: all these people can afford to pay for doubles to be sacrificed for their own sins, over and over again. The thing is, Brandon Cronenberg is what the kids these days call a “nepo baby,” and is plenty wealthy in his own right, which inevitably skews his perspective. It lands differently when someone with more than their fair share of advantages attempts commentary on the pitfalls of privilege. In this case, it’s kind of just a tedious mess.

Overall: C