Getting Away with Murder

Brandon Cronenberg’s new thriller Infinity Pool imagines a world where it’s possible to get away with murder, provided 1) you’re willing to pay a steep price for the privilege, and 2) you don’t mind being a corpse. The film is set in a fictional seaside tourist-trap country called La Tolqa, whose ruling authorities have access to technologies that allow them to clone any foreigner who transgresses against the locals, a nifty trick that turns capital punishment into just another exotic spectacle. Staring down the sight of his own doppelgänger being knifed to death – the agreed-upon punishment for mowing down a farmer during a drunk-driving escapade – novelist James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) looks horrified, relieved and intrigued: what, he wonders, are the other fringe benefits to being expendable?