Infinity Pool - Movie Review

How much I recommend it: 7/10

This one is trippy, dark, and thought-provoking.

A couple, James and Em, are vacationing on a fictional remote island. The resort they are staying at is isolated from the rest of the island as the tiny country is desperately poor and known to be dangerous for tourists.

They befriend another couple, Gabi and Alban, staying at the resort and get invited to leave the resort to go to a beach. They rent a car from a resort employee and head out for a day of drinking and hanging out in the sun.

When it’s time to leave, James volunteers to drive back as the others are drunk and sleepy. While driving down a dark road, the car’s headlights start to flicker on and off. While he is distracted trying to fix the headlights, a man crosses the road in front of the car and James plows into him, killing him.

James and Em are panicking and wanting to call the police but Gabi and Alban, say no, terrible idea. If you call the police here they’ll do terrible things to you. So they flee the scene and head back to the hotel.

The next morning, James is awoken to pounding on the door. It’s the police. They arrest him and take him and Em to the station. There, a detective informs him that the penalty for killing someone, regardless of if it was intentional or accidental, is death at the hands of the oldest son of the victim. Or, if there is no son, the police will do it. But, there is an exception for foreigners. Foreigners can pay for a ‘double’ to be killed in their place. The double is a clone of the murderer with all of their memories and an identical body. James agrees to this, signs some papers, withdraws some cash, and undergoes the procedure to double himself.

He wakes up in a hospital bed and after coming to his senses is taken to a room to watch the execution of his double. The 12 year old son of the murder victim approaches the double with a knife and stabs him over and over in abdomen until he dies. James and Em are both watching. Em is traumatized but James has a slight smile on his face as he watches the double scream in pain and die.

Back at the resort, James has an urn with the ashes of the double. James is invited to Gabi and Alban’s room where they are having a party. He’s informed that everyone there has had a similar experience, that they are all ‘zombies’ and how they can see he is a changed man. They invite him to come raid a house of a wealthy resort owner which he agrees to. They break in, steal a valuable from him, and hold him hostage until one of his staff comes out with a gun and starts shooting at the trespassers causing them to leave.

In the next scene, they are all in the same holding cell that James was after his murder. They all pay for doubles and are seen watching the execution of those doubles together like it’s a sport.

James’ wife hates who he is becoming and leaves him to go to the airport while he stays behind because his passport is lost. That night, he takes a drug sacred to the locals of the island and has an orgy with the crew he broke into the house with the night before.

They play a trick on him and he ends up beating up someone with a pillow sheet over his head that he believes is the detective. When they pull the sheet off, it’s revealed that it is another double of James.

In a moment of clarity, James tries to flee the resort. He pulls his passport (not actually lost) out from a hiding place under the sink and boards the hotel shuttle. En route, the bus is stopped by the group from the resort. They have guns and forcing James to get off the bus. They make him walk back to the hotel while they drive slowly behind him, taunting him and telling him that everything was a setup.

James escapes by running into the woods but is shot as he flees. He wanders until finding a farm, where he collapses and is taken in by the family. When he awakes, no one is around. He stumbles outside and the group from the resort is waiting for him. They have his double on a leash and are calling it “the dog” and tell him that he has to kill the dog. He does.

The next day, they are all seen on the bus heading to the airport. The other couples from the group are chatting casually about domestic things while James sit in the back of the bus shell shocked. One by one the couples board the planes and depart back to their homes while James is the last to leave.

In the final scene of the movie, he is seen sitting on the back chairs back at the resort in a torrential downpour. He never left.

Super trippy movie but I enjoyed it a lot. Lots of moral conundrums and unanswered questions.