Alexander Skarsgard refuses to be typecast – even if that means watching himself die

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As anyone who has been to Thailand knows, normal people can behave very badly on holiday.

“Yes, you get a break from your everyday life and, in certain regards, from your morality as well,” says Alexander Skarsgard, who becomes chief fiend in a holiday hell in Brandon Cronenberg’s film Infinity Pool. “‘I’m on holiday, I can do what I want, I’m paying for this’. That means I’m entitled to behave like an arsehole to the staff because this is my time off from everything.”

The white sunseekers in Infinity Pool don’t restrict themselves to snapping at cocktail waiters, however. Their appetites go well beyond mojitos.

In Infinity Pool, Alexander Skarsgard plays a failed novelist whose life takes a dark turn while on holiday. Credit: Neon

Skarsgard plays James, a failed novelist on holiday with the wife who bankrolls his literary career. As they head for the buffet breakfast, their marriage seems as lacklustre as his prose. Their trip sparks up when he falls in with a fast crowd – led by horror queen Mia Goth, malevolently great – who organise a forbidden trip to the rough town outside the resort. Driving home drunk, James hits and kills a local farmer.

Under the law of this fictitious country, James himself must now be killed by his victim’s son – unless he can pay to have a flesh-and-blood clone made who will take this punishment for him. The clone will have James’ memories and guilt, as well as his face. The kicker is that James is obliged to watch him die.

“I find most scripts I read are quite derivative, or a version of a movie I’ve seen 20 times already – or been in because you tend to get typecast,” says Skarsgard, whose efforts not to get typecast have meant he has run the gamut from playing Tarzan to the lead role of the recent medieval drama The Northman.

Brandon Cronenberg is the son of David, director of such classics of body horror as The Fly and Crash. Three features into his career, however, Cronenberg the younger has his own dark spin on the genre.

“I felt this script had such a unique tone, such a singular vision – and that’s rare,” says Skarsgard. “Filmmakers are so eager to please. They’re worried about how things will be perceived, and might adjust their vision to make it more palatable.” Cronenberg, by contrast, wasn’t bothered by being palatable. “He wanted it to be graphic and violent and sexy and crazy.”

It also provoked more questions than it answered. We are afraid even to talk about death, Skarsgard observes, let alone acknowledge it as part of every life.

“So what would happen to someone who literally gets to face it up close and watch his own demise, to see himself bleed out on the floor or fight to survive?” he says.

Mia Goth and Alexander Skarsgard in a scene from Infinity Pool.Credit: Neon

“It also opens up a lot of questions about our souls. Who are we? Because if the clone retains all your memories and believes he is you, how is he not you? Do we believe in a metaphysical soul?”

Cronenberg certainly doesn’t.

“I think the self is a trick that the brain plays,” the director says. “I think part of the subjective experience generated by our brains is this idea of self, self-ownership and continuity. I don’t think any of that actually exists. I don’t think there is a soul or essential self. If pressed, I would say there is no difference between the original and the double.”

Which means James has murdered himself. And as long as he can pay for it, he can do it again.

Disturbing as this is, most hostility to the film since its festival showings at Sundance and Berlin has been directed at its bloodiness. There is nothing half-human about a clone’s death.

Skarsgard took pleasure in the fact Cronenberg used fake blood and in-camera trickery rather than CGI to create action in the moment, not just in post-production.

“Very early on, Brandon explains how he wanted it to be,” Skarsgard says. “The goal would be that it would feel more uncomfortable to watch because what we’re watching is actually happening on the day we’re shooting it.”

Cronenberg politely brushes off accusations of excess. “So much of the action is driven by the psychological evolution of the characters, which is driven by the extreme experiences they have,” he says. “So for me, those scenes allow the audience to experience these things in an incredibly visceral way.

“I often get questions from journalists who are essentially asking, you know, ‘why show this?’ And it seems strange to me. Why show anything? Because film is a visual medium. To go through it is to experience it. That’s the essence of film as an art form.”

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