Synopsis

Novelist James Foster and his wife Em spend time at a resort in the fictional seaside country of Li Tolqa,[3] where a local festival is underway. The couple's chronic marital strife is exacerbated when Gabi, a fan of the only novel James has published to date, invites them to spend time with her and her husband Alban. The four have dinner and decide to spend the next day driving in the countryside, even though they have been warned that tourists are to remain on the resort compound at all times.At a beach, as James urinates behind a tree, Gabi unexpectedly grabs him from behind and proceeds to give him a handjob. After a long day of sunbathing and cooking, the tourists embark on a drunken drive back to their hotel. En route, James accidentally runs over a local man, killing him. Gabi insists that they cannot call the police, as the country is corrupt and they will not be safe.The next day, James is arrested and is told that the penalty for his crime is death at the hand of the dead man's firstborn son. However, the country has a unique system of justice whereby the guilty, for a hefty fee, can be cloned and have their duplicates killed in their place. James, who married into money, pays the fee to have a double killed before his eyes. Em is horrified by the entire affair and wants to leave immediately, but James is titillated by the spectacle and wants to stay. He hides his passport, claiming that he has lost it, and encourages Em to return to the United States.James extends his stay by a week and encounters Gabi and Alban again. They introduce him to a small group of Western tourists who all have been convicted of serious crimes and have paid to watch their doubles killed. These people return to the resort annually, commit heinous crimes, and pay to watch their doubles get slaughtered. Over the next several days, they encourage James to transform into a libertine criminal, encouraging him to kill locals, engage in intoxicated orgies, and abuse the resort staff.James is rattled one night when he is tricked into brutalizing a clone of himself he had been led to believe was the police detective who initially arrested him. In a moment of clarity and panic, James retrieves his hidden passport and attempts to flee, but the tourist group accosts him and abducts him from the bus transporting him to the airport. Gabi reveals that she finds him pathetic and that the group is abusing him for their own amusement, hoping to turn him into a fellow murder tourist. He runs off into a nearby wilderness. Gabi shoots him in the leg as he flees.After hours of wandering, James collapses at a farm, where a local family takes him in to recuperate. In his drugged state, he experiences a series of hallucinations. Once he has regained his strength, he is again confronted by Gabi's group, who orders him to kill a duplicate of himself to complete his transformation. He initially refuses, but when the clone attempts to kill him, James beats him to death. As a reward, Gabi exposes her bare breast to James, inviting him to breastfeed.The next day, as they head back to the United States, the other tourists casually chat about upcoming errands, while James is visibly shaken from the events of the past few days. Waiting in the airport for his flight, he resolves to remain behind instead. He returns to the closed resort, where he sits alone amidst the downpour of the monsoon.

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Feb 14, 2023 at 07:24 AM