Heartbeats and cumshots are the alpha and omega of Brandon Cronenberg’s vacation in White Lotus hell, where the tourists loosen their collars and let loose their lizard brains. The limbic system and the most basic biological processes of life dominate, the filmmaker’s descent into a slimy, sexy, terrifying world where death is just another game for rich people.
The dangled, juicy lure isn’t subtle: A seemingly normal couple being approached by weird Europeans always leads to trouble. We’d be fools not to be suspicious of Gabby and Al when they come up to their estranged hotel-mate couple James and Em . One of them is played by Mia Goth, which is a sure sign to hightail it back to your room and flip the “do not disturb” sign. But James is a novelist, with one bad book to his name that only got published because he married the rich publisher’s daughter.
Signs and confessional statements are written in chthonic runes, delivered in the belly of an Escher-like police station. Traditional masks look like scarred, melted faces, fused to the beautiful ones underneath in a disgusting dig at the monstrous hotties Instagramming their exploitations. An off-kilter score tweaks your ears. Any slow or obvious beat is disguised by tantalizing, upsetting aesthetic extravagance.