Mia Goth Mindbending R-Rated Horror On Hulu Could Be A New Classic

Infinity Pool begins as a film about annoying wealthy tourists, including a novelist and his wife, finding ways to kill time in a fictional resort. After the writer kills more than time, he discovers an insane secret: on this island, rich Westerners can pay to have themselves cloned, letting the copy get executed for crimes in their stead.

Unfortunately, this process begins to corrupt the writer, someone who begins all the darkest fantasies he might indulge in when he is never forced to pay the price for even the most heinous offenses.

Aside from the presence of Mia Goth, what initially caught my eye about Infinity Pool is that it was directed by Brandon Cronenberg, son of the legendary horror filmmaker David Cronenberg. This was actually Brandon’s third film, but the earlier two works (Antiviral and Possessor) hadn’t made much of an impression in Hollywood.

Infinity Pool, however, had generated major buzz due to a combination of trippy writing and creepy visuals that most certainly made his famous father proud.

Fortunately, the movie has some great talent to bring this tale to life: it stars Alexander Skarsgård (best known for True Blood and Succession) as the writer slipping deeper into a world of drinking, drugs, debauchery, and death. Mia Goth plays a veteran tourist who knows the secrets of this island and who may be luring this writer into something even darker and more disturbing. The cast of Infinity Pool is rounded out by some other genre faves, including Cleopatra Coleman, Jalil Lespert, and Amanda Brugel.

While the exact budget of the movie is unknown, the presence of modern scream queen Mia Goth helped make Infinity Pool into a very modest horror hit that earned $5.2 million at the box office.

It was a much bigger hit with critics; on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie currently has a critical score of 87 percent. In general, critics praised how the film “provides a visceral all-inclusive retreat of Cronenbergian perversion for those wanting to escape commercial sundries.”

That was generally my experience with this movie: I was admittedly expecting what I saw to be like a knockoff of David Cronenberg…a mere echo of his genre greatness. But Infinity Pool provides all of the cringe-inducing body horror of earlier Cronenberg films like The Fly along with the more cerebral terrors of modern fare like Crimes of the Future. The experience was the best of both worlds, one designed to terrify you inside and out.

Plus, both Alexander Skarsgård and Mia Goth do an excellent job of making Infinity Pool feel so fresh, with the former serving as the embodiment of an unmoored man who could easily be lured into a monstrous new life by meeting a pretty face. Speaking of which, Mia Goth is great at flipping the switch, effortlessly changing from party girl next door to something lethal and dangerous. It’s the same salty/sweet combination that made her so great in Pearl, and it’s on full display here.

Finally, while your mileage may vary, my inner sci-fi geek was very pleased with both the premise and the execution of Infinity Pool. The movie asks hard questions about whether the average man makes good and ethical choices out of a sense of inner righteousness or simply a fear of getting caught. At its blood-soaked best, this film channels Plato and his Ring of Gyges hypothesis, daring viewers to consider whether their own morality is based on nothing more than fear and self-preservation.

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Will you find the Infinity Pool as warm and exciting as I did, or will you want to dump this movie in and watch it clog the filter? You won’t know until you stream it on Hulu, of course. Afterward, it’s fair to say that you’ll never look at someone’s tropical vacation the same way ever again.