Infinity Pool Ending Explained (In Detail)

2023 body-horror Infinity Pool‘s tale of cloning and murder tourism ends on an ambiguous note, but the deeper meaning is easily unveiled once certain scenes are explained. Infinity Pool is the third feature film by Brandon Cronenberg, son of the legendary body-horror master David Cronenberg. Like Antiviral and Possessor, Infinity Pool sees Brandon following in his father’s footsteps. Full of bizarre horror sequences and visceral themes, the Infinity Pool ending explained little of its true purpose, leaving its most important themes up for audience interpretation as protagonist James is left to sit in a monsoon and think about his exploits.

Infinity Poolstars Alexander Skarsgård as novelist James Foster staying with his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman) at a resort in the seaside country of La Tolqa. James meets Gabi Bauer (Mia Goth) and her husband Alban (Jalil Lespert). While on a drive, a drunk James runs over and kills a local man. The following day he’s arrested and sentenced to death. However, La Tolqa allows tourists to pay to have clones created to be executed in their place. Infinity Pool explained several key details behind the strange premise, though they’re easy to miss on the first viewing.

Which Version Of James Is Executed In Infinity Pool?

The Surviving James Was Probably A Clone

At one point, the possibility is brought up that the original James was executed, and his clone lived. Infinity Pool purposely keeps it ambiguous whether this is actually what happens. However, Infinity Pool explained that multiple clones were created of James, at least one without his consent. This fact combined with a noticeable change in James’ personality after the execution makes it all the likelier that it was the original James who was executed. The themes behind Infinity Pool partially help explain this moment in the ending.

James experiences something of a death of morals when he realizes that he lives on an island free of consequences and decides to join Gabi’s gang of libertine tourists. Infinity Pool also explained that James is excited at the prospect of watching his double die, but when it comes to killing the clone himself, the act hits too close to home.

However, Gabi and her friends want a different James, one that doesn’t come with a conscience or a moral compass. Therefore, it makes sense that James would be killed off in favor of his clone — especially if the duplicate was more violent or could be more easily manipulated.

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Why Does Em Leave? (& Why Doesn’t James Go With Her?)

Em Saw What The Island Was Doing To James

Infinity Pool explained that Em left because she was terrified of the island’s bizarre justice system. While she was not implicated in James’ hit-and-run, his wife Em was forced to watch the execution. As his victim’s 13-year-old son stabbed him, “James” began begging Em for help. At the same time, she notices a complete lack of empathy in James sitting next to her. This lack of empathy is what eventually drives James to join horror actress Mia Goth’s Gabi and the others, as the Infinity Pool movie explained.

Em’s actions after the execution in Infinity Pool explained that she wanted to leave La Tolqa as quickly as possible. James suspects this too, which is why pretends to lose his passport by hiding it under the sink. Em initially stays at the resort with James but becomes increasingly disturbed by his behavior. Finally, Em leaves James and heads back to America, never again to be seen for the remainder of the film.

Em was the one positive force left in place to stop James from giving in to his carnal desires. Had she remained, it’s questionable if James would’ve joined Gabi and the others.

Who Are Gabi & Alban’s Friends In Infinity Pool?

La Tolqa Attracts Murder Tourists

Infinity Pool explained that Gabi and Alban’s friends are fellow tourists who visit La Tolqa annually to commit crimes and watch their doubles be killed. In the aftermath of the execution, Gabi explains to James that she and Alban also witnessed clones of themselves executed on a previous visit to La Tolqa. Gabi then introduces James to her and Alban’s friends, who have all been previously convicted of crimes in La Tolqa.

Knowing there are no permanent consequences for their actions, the group spends their vacations committing horrible crimes for fun. James is taken along to participate in a brutal home invasion, during which Alban ends up being shot in the leg, disturbing Em when James takes him back to their room. The next day, James is seen applauding with the group as he witnesses a group execution of a new batch of clones.

Infinity Pool explained that Jake later participates in an orgy with the group after taking a local hallucinatory drug with Gabi. However, James’s relationship with the group sours when it is revealed that a prospective victim appearing to be Detective Thresh is a clone of James made without his knowledge.

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What Are Gabi’s True Intentions In Infinity Pool?

Gabi Wanted To Break James And Rebuild Him As A Sadist

Despite initially appearing as a fan of James’ writing, her conduct by the ending of Infinity Pool explained that Gabi targeted and abused James for fun, hoping to turn him into a murder tourist while also demeaning him. She seduces him in the first half of the film, performing a sexual act on him when he doesn’t expect it, but this eventually leads to degradation and emasculation.

First, Gabi and her friends prevent James’ attempt to escape La Tolqa following his discovery of a clone of himself created without consent. Gabi then proceeds to abuse James from her car, calling him and his career as a novelist pathetic. Throughout the film, it is evident that Gabi has been grooming James to be a sadomasochistic slave of hers, beginning early in the movie with her sneaking up behind James and groping him.

The hallucinatory drug Gabi had James take likely played another role in her influence on him. As such, Gabi’s verbal abuse continues this breaking down of James, leading toward the final climatic moment of Infinity Pool. The Infinity Pool ending explained that Gabi wanted James to be just like her and her friends, and was disappointed when she found out he had a conscience.

What Was The Goal Of James’s Final Test?

James Had To Kill One Of His Clones As A Rite Of Passage

The climax of Gabi’s sadomasochistic game with James is forcing him to kill a clone of himself bred to be a rabid dog. Despite refusing to take the knife Gabi gives him, James is forced to fight back when his dog clone attacks, and James ends up punching the clone’s head into a bloody pulp. Finally, Gabi rewards a now fully broken James by allowing him to suck on her breast, which she covers with blood.

As Infinity Pool explained, this marks the point where James has entirely lost all of his humanity and is now wholly Gabi’s slave. The expectation is that James is fully integrated into Gabi’s group of murder tourists. However, the final moments of Infinity Pool hint that this is not the case. One of the biggest clues that it’s actually a clone James in the Infinity Pool ending is that when he arrives at the airport he has the same facial scars as the second James clone that he beats.

Why Does James Remain In La Tolqa?

The James That Stayed Behind May Be A Clone

As La Tolqa’s tourism season ends, everyone prepares to return to America. Gabi and others turn off the murderous characters they were on vacation and now converse like ordinary people. However, Infinity Pool explained that James is affected by the events, and the film’s final shot sees him opting to stay on La Tolqa and sit in an empty resort in the middle of a monsoon. It’s an odd choice for the Infinity Pool ending, but leaving off on a more ambiguous note leaves audiences with a lot to chew on.

There are many possible interpretations of the Infinity Pool ending. One is that James was irreparably traumatized by the film’s events and could no longer return to life. Therefore, he simply spent the rest of his days at La Tolqa, forced to live as a murder tourist for the rest of his life and suffer to pay for his sins.

Another possibility is that the original James died in the execution, and the James who remains in La Tolqa is just an emotionless clone who has had no real humanity to begin with. It seems as though Infinity Pool explained the latter ending, as there’s a lot of support for James being a clone.

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The Real Meaning Of Infinity Pool’s Ending Explained

Is Infinity Pool Just A Deeper Version Of The Purge?

Infinity Pool can be interpreted as a more cerebral version of The Purge. At its core, Infinity Pool explained what happens to someone’s humanity if they can commit horrible crimes with no real consequences. James is terrified when he hits someone with his car. However, he’s clearly enthralled at seeing his double killed and expresses enjoyment at the fact that he’s in a place where murderous actions don’t have consequences if one has the money to back it up. Gabi has fully embraced this lifestyle, and her goal throughout the film is to break James down to brainwash him.

Using psychoanalytic theory, Gabi represents the instinctual desires of the Id, and James is the organized and realistic Ego. James’ wife, Em, is the moralizing Super-Ego, and her departure makes James thoroughly corrupted by Gabi. Infinity Pool explained that Gabi entices James first through sexual pleasure and then with moral freedom.

Things only change between Gabi and James when he’s forced to kill his double himself, and she quickly begins to dehumanize and emasculate him for his lack of bloodlust. However, the dehumanizing of James doesn’t stick, and the Infinity Pool ending sees a man being a literal shell of his former self, whether the original or a clone.

Themes of hedonism and affluence collide in the Infinity Pool ending. It’s important to note that the only reason these murder tourists are able to keep up their games is that they have the cash to produce more clones. It speaks to an ugliness of increased wealth as it states that if one can already have it all, then human desires become more extreme.

It’s because of their money that the characters in Infinity Pool can live free of consequences. The Infinity Pool movie explained what happens if one is given both affluence and a consequence-free existence, to which the answer turned out to be a loss of humanity.

How Brandon Cronenberg Explains Infinity Pool

The Infinity Pool Director Has Kept The True Meaning A Secret

Infinity Pool explained little of its ending, and director Brandon Cronenberg has also decided to keep its meaning under wraps. In an interview with One Take News, Cronenberg was asked about the Infinity Pool ending, and stated that while he does have his own interpretation, he believes that a big part of a piece of art’s creation is audience interaction. Therefore, he refuses to forecast his own opinions on the Infinity Pool ending, saying,

“I do know what the ending means to me, but it’s not something I want to reveal […] because I want people to have a chance to explore [Infinity Pool] on their own terms.”

However, Cronenberg also had an interview with Fangoria discussing Infinity Pool, and he did give some insight into his casting choices, the story, and its themes. Cronenberg admits that he was inspired by a bizarre vacation to the Dominican Republic in which he was bused into a resort that was surrounded by a razor-wire fence in the dead of night. He also spoke about Infinity Pool‘s themes of identity, saying:

“It’s more about what makes someone a continuous human. Is a person singular, is a person continuous, or are these things more messy than that?”

How The Infinity Pool Ending Compares To Cronenberg’s Other Films

The Son Of David Cronenberg Is Making A Name For Himself With Bleak Finales

Infinity Pool has a somewhat ambiguous ending that hints the central character, James, is forever changed by the events on La Tolqa (and not in a good way). This is an idea that’s been prevalent across director Brandon Cronenberg’s movies, namely 2012’s Antiviral and 2020’s Possessor. The son of acclaimed sci-fi-horror director David Cronenberg, Infinity Pool director Brandon Cronenberg is already making a name for himself when it comes to bleak identity-based psychological scares that end on a less-than-positive note.

For example, 2012’s Antiviral takes place in an alternate future where the latest craze is purchasing cloned viruses and pathogens that have previously infected celebrities. The central character, Syd, is a salesperson for these pathogens, though he’s also something of an addict to them himself. By the end of Antiviral, it emerges that Syd decides to willingly ignore a harrowing conspiracy involving the kidnapping of a young celebrity, Hannah, because those responsible have allowed him to have access to her blood to satiate his own strange urges to be as close to her as possible.

The ending of Antiviral mirrors Infinity Pool on a thematic level here. Just as James decides not to leave La Tolqa despite the brutality he witnessed, Syd decides he can look past the fact that genetics company Vole & Tesser had tried to kill him. The moral and ethical objections he had at the beginning of Antiviral are washed away by the end, and he decides instead to give in to his darkest urges, something he and Infinity Pool’s James have in common (provided, of course, that the James seen at the end isn’t a clone).

Brandon Cronenberg’s other movie, Possessor, also has a few similarities to Infinity Pool by the ending. Namely, it’s that protagonist Vos seems to have lost any kind of moral or ethical objection to killing or death. However, it must be noted that Vos is an assassin from the very beginning of Possessor, unlike the characters of Infinity Pool or Antiviral’s Syd, so her fall into ambivalence towards ending the lives of others is somewhat less pronounced.

Infinity Pool

Written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg, Infinity Pool is a horror/sci-fi film That follows a couple vacationing on a mysterious island resort. While enjoying their time on the idyllic island, they soon meet a mysterious woman named Gabi, who lures them outside the resort grounds and into a world of hedonistic pleasures and violence. However, when they find themselves at the center of a tragic accident, they come face to face with a zero-tolerance policy for crime where execution – or worse, may be the punishment.

Director

Brandon Cronenberg

Release Date

January 27, 2023

Studio(s)

Elevation Pictures

Writers

Brandon Cronenberg

Runtime

117 minutes

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