Infinity Pool
Cert: 18 | ★★★★✩

A holiday at an exclusive luxury resort turns into a hellish nightmare for a rich couple in Brandon Cronenberg’s latest film.

Novelist James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) and his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman) are spending time in the fictional seaside country of Li Tolqa — filming actually took place in Šibenik, Croatia, should you be inspired to follow in their footsteps despite the events of the movie.

Bored by what’s on offer at their hotel, the couple’s already fractured relationship is further muddied when Gabi (Mia Goth, typically mesmerising), a fan of the only novel James has ever written, invites them on an illicit excursion outside the resort alongside her husband Alban (Jalil Lespert).

Infinity Pool (4)

Alexander Skarsgård

After a fleeting sexual encounter with Gabi during their outing, James’s life is thrown into further disarray when a fatal accident exposes the resort’s perverse taste for hedonistic tourism.

Cronenberg is the son of veteran horror director David Cronenberg, and shares his father’s penchant for violence, sex and blurred lines between reality and fiction.

Here he has managed to deliver an astute and incisive commentary on the cost of luxury for those providing it. With bodily fluids, drug use and depraved sexual encounters aplenty,

Infinity Pool often feels like a fever dream where boundaries between reality and fiction are repeatedly broken, only to be rebuilt .

Elevated by Skarsgård’s peerless depiction of a man completely out of his depth, the film offers James’s slow descent into depravity as an example of the corrupting nature of unlimited wealth.

Cronenberg incisively critiques global inequalities in a world where being rich can not only buy you anything, it can allow you to get away with murder over and over again.

While Infinity Pool may be more sexually explicit than some of the cult director’s earlier offerings, there is something truly admirable about a filmmaker who isn’t afraid of pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in mainstream horror.

At times Infinity Pool feels a little uneven, but visually this is Cronenberg’s best work yet. Dad must be proud.