Blood, sweat, tears and semen: ‘Infinity Pool’ explores breastfeeding from terror

Brandon Cronenberg’s body horror film ‘Infinity Pool’ is a dripping film, fueled by endless fluids: blood, sweat, tears, urine, semen and vomit.

When James (Alexander Skarsgard) and his wealthy wife, Em (Cleopatra Coleman), head to a luxury hotel, discover a secret world of hedonism. in which wealthy tourists led by Gabi (Mia Goth) explore new depths of depravity. However, it is the ending that stands out. After a feast of ultraviolence, Gabi shows his chest, covers it in blood and lets James suck it. It turns out that breastfeeding is the most gruesome act of all.

Plenty of recent horror movies and series, including ‘Infinity Pool,’ ‘Barbarian,’ ‘Titane,’ and ‘The Baby,’ have featured erotic lactation, battered nipples, and satanic suckling. Whether it’s a source of simplistic scares or something more meaty, breastfeeding is being used to create terror.

“Regardless of our feelings about breastfeeding, it has a primal or visceral connection, so it’s a good way to throw the audience off balance.said Casey Hudecki, the privacy coordinator for Infinity Pool.

In Zach Cregger’s hit ‘Barbarian,’ Airbnb guests Tess (Georgina Campbell) and Keith (Alexander’s brother Bill Skarsgard) discover a sex dungeon complete with a TV blaring a breastfeeding tutorial. They are then attacked by the Mother, a product of incest with saggy breasts. When the couple’s host, AJ (Justin Long)—who has been accused of sexual assault—heads home, he too is “adopted” by the Mother. AJ and Tess are forced to drink from Mother’s bottle and, when AJ refuses, from her breast.

For Matthew Patrick Davis, who plays the Mother, it’s the twisted situation that makes breastfeeding in ‘Barbarian’ especially sinister. “The act itself is beautiful and natural and primitive, so taken in a different context it becomes strange.”, he commented. But she said the image conveys a sense of revenge for the violations the Mother herself has endured.

Others are not convinced that ‘Barbarian’ is feminist. For Erin Harrington, author of ‘Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film: Gynaehorror,’ the Mother is just another “abject maternal body that doubles as a punching bag,” she said.

It is this mass of contradictory effects —the innocent, the childish and the sexual— which creates such a fertile source of inspiration. It forces us to confront the most frightening thing of all: our own origins.

“These images remind us — that we came from someone else’s body, that, at a certain stage, we have been viscerally connected to another person,” Harrington explained.

KYLE MACNEILL
THE NEW YORK TIMES