Infinity Pool review: Mia Goth steals the show again in a horror film that’s more gory than story

INFINITY POOL

(18) 118mins

★★★☆☆

HORROR films starring Mia Goth are like buses – you wait for one, then two come along at once.

Bouncing straight off last week’s excellent Pearl, Goth’s occasionally crazed eyes and twitchy smile are once again on the big screen to terrify us all.

This time, she is on the holiday from hell in Brandon Cronenberg’s lurid thriller that is a cautionary tale to never leave the hotel resort complex.

One-time writer James (Alexander Skarsgard) and his wealthy wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman) are on a beach holiday that holds a lot of passive-aggressive conversation.

Wild depravity

James has written one book six years ago and not worked since, while Em bankrolls his endless writer’s block.

Soon he meets flirtatious actress Gabi (Goth) and her French architect husband Alban (Jalil Lespert).

The pair are regular visitors to the fictional island and insist on taking the pair out for a boozy picnic on a deserted beach far away from the resort.

It’s a very uneasy occasion, which ends in a shocking drink-driving incident that gets James and Em arrested for murder.

According to the terrifying policeman, the punishment for this crime is execution.

But if you have money, there’s an option to “double” yourself — meaning a clone of you can be created to then be killed.

A graphic and gory scene shows James watching his double being brutally stabbed to death.

And while Em is deeply traumatised to see her cloned husband being violently murdered, James feels nothing.

This sets him on a mission to meet more like-minded tourists who have also been on the receiving end of some cloning.

They take drug-taking to wild levels of depravity, some of which is stomach-churningly grotesque, including orgies and terrifying hallucinations.

Things all get a bit Clockwork Orange, with the drugged-up gang putting on terrifying masks and breaking into a house to cause horror and pain.

Goth, once again, is the show-stealer here, with a performance that makes you believe the unbelievable.

Skarsgard, too, is excellent and the first half of the film has you intrigued about how this idea of a cloning nightmare will play out.

Sadly, the movie loses direction, making it more gory than story.

A GOOD PERSON

(15) 129mins

★★☆☆☆

I LIKE to imagine this is a film that started off as a very different idea.

My hope is director Zach Braff wanted it to be a hard-hitting drama about the horrors of the OxyContin painkiller epidemic that is infecting Middle America.

But then, along the way, others got involved and suggested casting Morgan Freeman to do Shawshank-esque voiceovers, making this film a bizarre mix of gritty drama and slushy nonsense.

Allison (Florence Pugh) has a wonderful life – a handsome fiancé, great career and lovely friends.

But all this changes when she is involved in a car crash, killing her fiancé’s sister and her husband.