Alexander Skarsgard's new horror movie 'Infinity Pool' is based on director Brandon Cronenberg's real life holiday from hell.
Alexander Skarsgard's new movie Infinity Pool is based on the experiences of director Brandon Cronenberg
The film stars Skarsgard as an author who finds himself trapped on a particularly disturbing vacation and Cronenberg - son of legendary director David Cronenberg - has now revealed it was partly inspired by his own trip to a resort in the Dominican Republic 20 years ago.
He told The Hollywood Reporter: "I did draw on some experiences I had, the one time I did go to a resort about 20 years ago, for when I started building out the particulars of the resort compound, the barbed wire fencing and so on. A lot of that was taken from reality. It was vacation that I found to be particularly menacing ...
"It was the Dominican Republic and it was very surreal. They would bus you in in the middle of the night. You wouldn’t see any of the surrounding country at all because it was dark. They just dropped you into a compound surrounded by razor wire fence, it was much like in the film. There was a fake town where you could shop, but not outside the compound. There was a Chinese restaurant, there was a horrible disco."
He added one scene in the film involving an ATV did actually happen during his holiday and he was left with plenty of questions about his trip.
Cronenberg went on: "At the end of the week, they bus you back to the airport during the day, and you see this incredible poverty surrounding the resort. That contrast is horrible but also completely surreal. You realise you’ve never been to the actual country.
"Where were you? ... Was it some alternate dimension that had broken through in this host country? Was it a tacky Disneyland mirror of reality? That to me was alarming but also felt like a great setting for characters not dealing with conventional consequences."
Tagged in David Cronenberg Alexander Skarsgard