Who knew Brandon Cronenberg’s feature-length bonus episode of The White Lotus — aka Infinity Pool — would get so weird? Probably most us familiar with the director’s father. After all, the fleshy apple doesn’t fall far from the mind-warping tree. Brandon’s last film, the 2020 sleeper hit Possessor, more than proved it. But his balancing act of striking imagery, purposeful violence and a compelling conflict starts to teeter in the sands of this sunny vacation.

Alexander Skarsgård (The Northman) plays James Foster, a one-trick novelist who can’t find a thrill at a beachside resort in Latoka, an ambiguous country featuring a festival of stereotypes. While his wife (Cleopatra Coleman, Fear Clinic) begs for any reaction beyond disconnected grunts, James is drawn to Gabi (Mia Goth, Pearl), a British actress and his writing’s “No. 1” fan. After plowing over an unassuming farmer following a drunken picnic outside the resort, Lakota’s authorities deliver a simple punishment: execution.

But Lakota enjoys tourists. Specifically, the stupid-rich kind. For a fee, any foreigner on death row can infinity-clone themselves to endure as many deaths as possible — hence, Gabi and her gang of insufferable “zombies.” Yet the more James destroys himself, the more the island paradise morphs into purgatory.

Infinity Pool’s effects and snap editing are great in the cloning sequences, but they soon wane as film stalls at its halfway mark. This was a fantastic way to illustrate the (literally) internal struggle of Possessor, but it was also used sparingly. Cronenberg lacks that refrain here — maybe because he didn’t have much of a story to fill it with. That’s not to say the ideas he proposes aren’t intriguing or worthwhile; he just spends so much time identifying them without saying anything deeper. It’s excruciating similar to how Alex Garland approached toxic masculinity — one of this film’s many subjects — in 2022’s Men.

Perhaps by accident, Infinity Pool also follows last year’s trilogy of eat-the-wealthy flicks, including Glass Onion, Triangle of Sadness and The Menu. The film feels imitative in the wake of these, all the way down to the “consensual cuckoldry.” It definitely has the most interesting sex scene — an orgy that feels like it was pulled from Phil Tippett’s Mad God — but that does little to make up for the movie’s weaknesses.

What the film has in spades, however, is an unhinged Goth. Her part alone carries the overarching insanity. Gabi is as much of a siren and nurturer as she is a sadistic matriarch. Goth is perfectly cast, and the image of her cradling an infantile Skarsgård might be Infinity Pool’s most telling frame.

The movie isn’t an utter misfire, but it is a disappointing mark on li’l Cronenberg’s otherwise spotless filmography. Maybe the extra creamy NC-17 cut will fix that. Maybe. —Daniel Bokemper

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Who better to help resurrect the nature-run-amok film in the late 1990s than Fox, the television network behind all those glorious When Animals Attack specials? In Legion of Fire: Killer Ants!, the exclamatory bastards in question are feisty and man-eating. When an underground volcano starts rumbling and tumbling, the six-legged South American menaces are forced to the surface. Popping up in the sleepy Alaskan town of Burly Pines, they’re like, “Sweet, this’ll do. Let’s prey.”

Following the telefilm’s docu-shock foreword, a young couple in the forest for an impromptu photoshoot find a heap of trouble when the woman hops atop a giant anthill to vogue. She gets dragged through the hole to die, as does her shutterbug boyfriend while trying to save her.

It becomes painfully obvious to the locals that sinister insect forces are at work, stripping their moose population to the bone in a matter of minutes. Bug expert Dr. Jim Conrad (Eric Lutes, Bram Stoker’s The Mummy) rushes to the rescue. With the aid of a cute, frizzy-haired schoolteacher (Julia Campbell, Opportunity Knocks) and a widowed police chief (Mitch Pileggi, Shocker), Conrad wages war against the largely computer-animated rascals, which are seen at one point walking across a yard while carrying the body parts of their latest victim.

Also known as Marabunta, Legion of Fire sports dirt-cheap effects and leads thrown into one preposterous, predictable situation after another. However, any movie — especially one made for TV — that dares to snuff out so many living things (kids included) in such laughable methods deserves a couple hours of your time. And so does the weeping deputy who shoots at the ants with his gun. —Rod Lott

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While white people steadily line up to fork a few bucks for the race-baiting Avatar: The Way of Water, a true Indigenous sci-fi flick came out a few months ago: the alien-infused, back-biting cut of Slash/Back, directed by the daring Nyla Innuksuk.

A community of wholesome-but-troublesome pre-teens are petering around their small Intuit town. Taking their father’s boat to a neighboring island, they have to fend off a snarling bear. But the animal is seemingly part of a cosmic invasion, beginning with small, cuddly scenes of true wildlife to extraterrestrial-possessed, snarling-spittle man-things.

After said bear is taken out by the girls, the aliens want revenge. Now inhibited the town’s small police force, they come after the girls — and these are no shrieking violets! They formulate a master plan: armed with a hunting rifle, harpoon and other tools of the trade, to take out the menace with extreme prejudice, all in time for the conclusion of the town’s community center dance.

A Native-twinged riff on malingering post-mortem possession along the lines on John Carpenter’s The Thing and other stalwarts, Slash/Back takes the changeling formula and breathes new life with the Innuksuk’s innovative story, set in a dying town where tradition lumbers forth and swings back with a sick crack — with, of course, an alien invasion theme.

Slash/Back’s leads — especially Tasiana Shirley and Nalajoss Ellsworth as two of the young warriors — are up to the task, quelling any incoming invasion with both their Indigenous heritage and their pop-culture breakdown, giving this movie another rung of the absolute ladder of total domination … with space monsters to boot. —Louis Fowler

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Until Blade righted the ship in 1998, a curse hovered over attempts at live-action film and TV adaptations of Marvel Comics. Case in point: Generation X, less-than-lukewarm Fox pilot movie of the teenage X-Men spin-off comic book, then just 2 years old. Although full of special effects and ably directed by the underrated Jack Sholder (The Hidden), Generation X tumbles laughably in its painfully transparent desire to connect with a hip, youthful audience.

Six teen mutants gather at Professor Xavier’s gifted school to learn how to rein in their powers, using them only for good. Looking like an emaciated version of MTV’s Puck, Refrax (Randall Slavin, Monster High) shoots lasers from his eyes, while Jubilee (Heather McComb, F.A.R.T. the Movie) shoots fireballs from her hands. Buff (Suzanne Davis, Fear Runs Silent) is blessed with the upper body of Fabio, while the others … hell, I don’t recall.

Under the tutelage of silver-wigged vixen Emma Frost (The Apple dancer Finola Hughes, who boosts her performance via push-up bras, which made flames shoot out my eyes), the high-school superheroes band together to battle the evil, mad scientist Tresh (Matt Frewer, Lawnmower Man 2: Jobe’s War).

Although the kids are extremely unappealing, Frewer is the film’s true liability. Aping Jim Carrey’s Riddler shtick to the unfunny T, Frewer is embarrassing. He gets one good joke out of the hundred he spews over the course of the film, and since it involves the ugliness of the hair of the stretchy-armed Skin (Agustin Rodriguez, Strange Days), it’s a joke the audience had written long before.

Equally banal is scripter Eric Blakeney’s insertion of pop-culture references in hopes of passing the show off as some cutting-edge, in-the-know, hip-and-with-it flick. When Emma and her Irish partner (Prom Night III’s Jeremy Ratchford, whose Banshee possesses a sonic-boom scream) present themselves to security as “Officers Hootie and Blowfish,” the line isn’t merely stupid, but expired upon airdate.

If this pilot is indicative of how the Generation X series was poised to go, good thing they quit while they were ahead. —Rod Lott

As the South Korean blockbuster Alienoid posits, aliens hide their prisoners inside human bodies. Whenever those prisoners escape, in swoop Guard and Thunder to make things right. The sleek Guard is basically Iron Man with all right angles smoothed out, while Thunder resembles an overweight View-Master and can turn into a talking car.

Meanwhile (?), in the late 14th century, people tussle over the Divine Blade, a sword with regenerative properties and the ability to rip open portals in time. Never the twain shall meet? Not a chance! And to no one’s surprise, the melding of very different time periods (and the subgenres of martial arts and superhero sci-fi) makes for fun sequences — not that the film lacks in that department before a single dimension is hopped.

Look, a lot goes on in Alienoid‘s 142 minutes. Bursts of energy shoot from palms. Spiked tentacles whip this way and that. Kitty cats emerge from paper fans. Guard and Thunder have adopted a precocious daughter. There’s even a character named Dog Turd. One could argue writer and director Choi Dong-hoon (The Thieves) has packed in too much “much” for his movie’s own good. (To be transparent, its sequel was shot in tandem.)

Although not based on a comic book, Alienoid is assuredly influenced by Marvel, for good and for ill. It’s big, bright and colorful. Action and humor occupy a common space. Special effects appear no-expense-spared. But when spectacle overwhelms all else, as it does in a punishing 20-minute finale, your patience may be as defeated as the forces of evil. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.