Infinity Pool (2023 | Canada | 124 minutes | Brandon Cronenberg)

first take: What sicko gave the keys to the White Lotus to Baby Cronenberg?

Three years after debuting his body-hopping psychological horror story Possessor at Sundance, Brandon Cronenberg returns to the festival with a twisted tale of wealthy vacationers in a very strange land. Some strange whispered sleeptalk (“you can’t feed yourself with white sand brain death”) portends that a seemingly straightforward holiday at a luxury compound might not be quite what it seems. James and Em (Alexander Skarsgård and Cleopatra Coleman), a struggling-for-a-sequel author and the daughter of his wealthy publisher, are on a sun-drenched getaway to inspire his creative juices, but oddities linger at the resort. Brunch service in the fictional seaside state of Li Tolqa begins with mention of a “summoning” the oncoming rainy season and staff wearing unsettling masks suggesting deformed faces.

To Em’s chagrin, a fawning fan of James’s novel (Mia Goth, at full intensity as a actress whose specialty is failing at ordinary tasks) recognizes him on the beach and, in irresistible flattery to his ego invites them to dinner with her architect husband (Jalil Lespert). The next day, against the strict advice of the resort, they borrow a convertible and venture for a seaside picnic beyond the heavily fortified property’s boundaries. A drunken afternoon, including a clandestine “fan-job” (explicitly depicted, complete with NC-17 release), turns to an ill-advised intoxicated night drive on windy rural roads. Fleeing a fatal accident, the next morning introduces them all to the country’s draconian laws — state-sponsored vengeance — as well as a loophole for well-heeled visitors: for a price, law-breakers can step into a psychedelic goop pit, have themselves and their memories cloned, and send the surrogate to meet one’s own bloody fate. Skarsgård conveys the panic of finally facing the consequences of his irresponsibility, but as he’s forced to watch a teenage boy participate in violent a state-sponsored execution of his clone by stabbing, the grin that flickers through his expression of numb horror lets us know the sick fun’s only just begun.

Em sees it immediately — “you’ve gone wrong around the eyes, like one of those crabs at the dump” — and she grows distant and desperate to leave the country. Grounded by a missing passport, James finds that he’s an initially reluctant inductee into a society of survivors, whose escape from consequences inspires wild nights of intoxicated depravity. Fueled by alcohol, indigenous plant-based hallucinogens, and the delirium-inducing power of their own wealth, their evenings are given over to lurid orgies, dangerous masked crime sprees, and twisted psychological games, all of which play to the Cronenberg family tradition of squicky onscreen provocations. Tranced out sex parties, pleasures of the flesh, hallucinatory body horror, and all manner of violent bacchanalia ensue.

Skarsgård throws himself into the role, you can feel the sense of time catching up with both him and his character, with his revulsion turning to libertine lust and sweaty panic. Goth, too, flutters from flirty fangirl to seductive ringleader of a circus of sickos whose imperviousness to the law has divorced them from any sense of morality. As yet another entry in the growing canon of commentary on wealth inequality, it’s not necessarily the most sophisticated (for another take on the tricky ethics of convenience cloning, check out Dual from last year’s festival), but in confronting these ethical quandaries of amorality, Cronenberg brings a sensory overload to the propulsive descent. It’s gross, but unsettling fun, and can any festival feel complete without a midnight naked Skarsgård knife fight?