INFINI (2015)

Infini (2015)
Directed by: Shane Abbess
Written by: Brian Cachia, Shane Abbess
Starring: Bren Foster, Daniel MacPherson, Dwaine Stevenson, Grace Huang, Harry Pavlidis, Luke Ford, Luke Hemsworth

INFINI (2015)
Directed by Shane Abbess

Set in a future where poverty is widespread, those looking to earn a living are forced to work further afield – off-planet mining. Whit Carmichael is one such individual and leaves his pregnant wife to slipstream with the rest of his team to off-world mining station Infini. When a crew return rage-filled and infected, Whit has no choice but to escape the facility and slipstream to Infini to escape being killed in the quarantine lockdown. After being notified of disasterous events but given very few details on what has exactly happened, a search and rescue crew are sent to Infini to rescue Whit and shutdown a payload but little do they know about the contagion which awaits them.

Sci-Fi thriller Infini starts off as a very clever, intellectual story with the opening credits giving background on what type of future we’re about to witness. The film goes into detail explaining the idea of slipstreaming – a method of travelling from one place to another instantly by breaking the physical form into data and transporting it from a sender to a receiver. What is usually a simple procedure isn’t exactly foolproof as sometimes the data received on the other side isn’t whole or can be corrupted on the way across. This technologically advanced idea which seems very much rooted in sci-fi lore felt completely fresh and inventive and made me excited for what I was about to watch. Unfortunately, Infini doesn’t go down the route I expected or hoped it would. This whole background on slipstream is a wasted opportunity and makes me wonder why the film bothered building up the backstory about it anyway.

The movie has a style of Event Horizon meets The Thing meets Aliens however it doesn’t come close to any of these films in terms of plot or storytelling. After a confusing and over-complicated opening, Infini‘s basic storyline is revealed and it’s basically about a parasitic contagion that spreads through touch, saliva and blood and drives its host insane. Whit Carmichael is the only survivor of his crew but is the rest of Infini free of infection? That’s what our armed rescue team are about to find out. With suspicion filling the air, it doesn’t take long for the crew to turn on Whit and each other and it very much seems that it’s every man for himself. As the film descends into gunfights, fist fights and arguments, it’s evident that Infini is merely a tale of virus survival in an isolated location and little else.

Whilst Infini looks good and makes good use of CGI to create futuristic technology for the soldiers, there’s hardly anything going on to keep the viewer glued to the screen. When the storyline has made itself evident and shown that in fact it’s not as clever nor as original as it first appeared to be, it begins to drag to its conclusion, a conclusion that reveals itself at the beginning of the movie. Though tense here and there, there’s simply not enough for the viewer to care or give a damn about and that includes Whit Carmichael.

Infini has the style but unfortunately not the substance nor story.

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