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

Get it at Amazon.

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

Get it at Amazon.