Alexander Skarsgård gets slimy in Infinity Pool

What would you do if you could commit every imaginable excess, get executed to pay for your crimes, yet live to indulge your appetites another day? Get ready to plunge into the answer in sci-fi horror film Infinity Pool.

When the rich need a break from doing … whatever … and The White Lotus isn’t to their liking, they head for an island resort near the Croatian town of Li Tolqa. Aside from relaxing on the exclusive beaches while having their every whim catered to, guests can join in the festivities as the locals celebrate the pre-rainy season summer festival of The Summoning with grotesque masks (yikes, trypophobia trigger warning!) and pageantry. There’s just one rule: guests are not allowed outside the resort grounds’ barbed wire-topped high fences.

It sounds like an ideal getaway for struggling author James (Alexander Skarsgård) and his rich wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman). But from the get-go, nothing seems to shake James out of his sullen mood until a charming resort guest named Gabi Bauer (Mia Goth) tells him the one thing he wants to hear – that she loved his book. So he jumps in with both feet when she invites them to dinner with her husband Alban (Jalil Lespert). And despite some ego-bruising dinner conversation that exposes Em’s masked contempt for James leeching off her, James fixates on Gabi and drags Em to go sightseeing with the Bauers. 

During their clandestine road trip outside the resort, the Bauers pick at James and Em’s marriage and James’s ego like vultures until their drunken day in the sun comes to a shocking end when James hits and kills a pedestrian during the drive back. Panicking, James and Em go along with the Bauers when they refuse to call the police and offer to cover up the crime. But the next day James is hauled off by the police to see the other side of Li Tolqa. 

James is stripped, shoved into a hospital gown, and interrogated by police commander Thresh (Thomas Kretschmann), who reveals that the Bauers have accused James of stealing the car and driving drunk, and that Em confirmed their account. As James sweats, stammers and trembles, Thresh tells him that he’s been sentenced to death without trial, and that the victim’s 13-year-old son will conduct the execution. But there is a way out. Thresh casually tells James, as if this is an everyday process for him (and by the efficiency of the setup, it most certainly is), that if he pays a significant amount of money, the government has the facilities to construct a body double to take his place for the execution. Desperate, James signs an agreement. Then it’s time for the vat of goo and some bizarre science before James and Em are presented with James’s exact double and forced to watch the execution while the double, who supposedly has all James’s memories, pleads for his life. 

James doesn’t look away or blink for a second and subtly, as his double dies, he begins to smile. It’s Skarsgård time, baby! After a half-hearted struggle with his conscience, James reconnects with Gabi and starts to explore the lengths he’s willing to go to to indulge his appetites without consequence and without limits. He isn’t the only rich tourist who has truly found themselves in Li Tolqa. 

Want a preview of what that looks like? If Alexander Skarsgård has a niche, it’s playing privileged guys with deadly, devious and unpredictably animalistic appetites. Check out four of his other roles…

True Blood Season 1-7: Eric Northman

Viking prince-turned-vampire Eric Northman is over 1 000 years old by the time he arrives in Louisiana to run vampire bar Fangtasia. While he’s the area’s sheriff, he’s thoroughly immoral and bored by petty vampire politics. Eric runs a torture chamber underneath his bar and treats humans as especially tasty and occasionally interesting cattle. Manipulative, untrustworthy and given to mischief, this trickster is still the most fun you can have on either side of the grave if you capture his attention. But grovel in front of his throne and he’ll kick you in the face. 

The Northman: Amleth

Amleth is a Viking prince determined to avenge his father’s murder. In battle, though, he draws on something beyond the human as he fights naked on a volcano while covered in gore. “The Vikings believed that some people had a spirit animal living within them that would manifest itself… in different ways… In Amleth’s case, it’s both wolf and bear — Beowulf, if you will. Before the [film’s] big raid on the Slav village, we watch him take on the strength and ferocity of a bear combined with the agility and nimbleness of a wolf,” says Alexander. 

Succession Season 3-4: Lukas Matsson

Lukas joins Succession in Season 3 as the founder of GoJo who’s aiming to buy the Roy family’s media conglomerate, Waystar-Royco. Lukas is a tech prodigy, prankster, and a disruptor to the Roys’ world of “quiet luxury”. His T-shirt and dressing gown approach to formal dressing is a billboard advertising that he is powerful enough not to have to play by their rules, or anyone else’s. While the Roys treat business deals as a serious game, Lukas treats them as an invitation to provocation. “It’s high stakes gambling, and that’s what drives him forward and moves him. He’ll always try to do the impossible, and push boundaries, and do something people say can’t be done, or shouldn’t be done. Because he is an agent of chaos and can flirt with that disaster. So it’s exciting for him,” explains Alexander.

Big Little Lies Season 1-2: Perry Wright

On the surface he’s perfect. Tall, rich, handsome, successful, intelligent, a faithful husband and engaged father. Nobody would suspect Perry Wright of doing everything from emptying LEGOs all over his wife Celeste (Nicole Kidman) to biting her. His claims in couples therapy that he “lost control” fall apart when you realise that he’s perfectly capable of restraining himself when other people are looking, and only batters Celeste verbally, sexually and physically when they’re alone together. A textbook abuser, his violence isn’t about losing control, it’s about establishing complete control of his partner and blaming her for his violence so nothing is ever his fault. He’s not scared of Celeste leaving him for any other reason than it’ll threaten his ego, which feeds on her fear and efforts to appease him like a vampire with a blood bag. 

Stream Infinity Pool on Showmax now.