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INFINI (2015) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

inFINI (2015) movie

Genre | Science Fiction

Classification | M

Running time | 110 minutes

Released | 8 May 2015

cast

Daniel MacPherson ... Whit Carmichael
Grace Huang ... Claire Grenich
Luke Hemsworth ... Charlie Kent
Luke Ford ... Chester Huntington
Bren Foster ... Morgan Jacklar
Dwaine Stevenson ... Rex Mannings
Harry Pavlidis ... Harris Menzies

director

Shane Abbess

writer

Shane Abbess ... (written by)

Brian Cachia ... (story by) and
Shane Abbess ... (story by)

Brian Cachia ... (co-writer) (uncredited)

cinematographer

Carl Robertson

music

Brian Cachia

film editor

Adrian Rostirolla

box office result

Worldwide $not available

Australia $not available

North America $not available

the best dialogue

Whit Carmichael: I know you're listening. You could have chosen any part of any one of us. But you chose the worst parts of human behavior to use as your voice. You chose hatred. You chose violence. You chose conflict. You had an inability to see the bigger picture. You had a down-right fucking refusal to see beyond the present. You couldn't get past your own selfish, ignorant need to dominate. If you had of had time to grow, time to evolve, things could have been different... if we could have worked together.

Whit Carmichael: I was never meant to be here. All I was trying to do was make a better life for my family. And you took that away from me. You took that away from all of us. And now look where it's got us. Whatever you tried to do here. You failed.

INFINI (2015) MOVIE IMAGES

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INFINI (2015) STORY SYNOPSIS

Set in the dark reaches of space, INFINI is the story of an elite search and rescue team transported to a distant mining station to save Whit Carmichael (Daniel MacPherson) who is the lone survivor of a freak accident. Using Slipstream technology the team must transport into a hostile environment and quarantine a lethal biological weapon, which is set to arrive on Earth within the hour.

INFINI (2015) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty | Review date 8 May 2015
Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐

Sydney film-maker Shane Abbess returns to screens (albeit in digital download) with INFINI, a tense thriller that takes its storytelling and stylistic cues from classic late 1970s and early 1980s science fiction and horror movies from directors as diverse as Ridley Scott and John Carpenter. While the rest of the world enjoys the full cinema experience, Australian audiences have to settle for the digital download option, as our country's ongoing film piracy obsession continues to threaten the ability for increasing home-grown entertainment output. It’s a shame too, as the film’s final big screen appearance (at the Ritz Cinema in the Sydney suburb of Randwick), proved that there’s a market for good Australian science fiction movies in cinema release.

INFINI stars Daniel Macpherson as Whit Carmichael, a survivor of an ill-fated search and rescue mission to the space colony of the film's title. Whit is a computer programmer who, like many in the film's preamble about deteriorating conditions on Earth in the 23rd Century, has been forced into a dangerous occupation (intergalactic search & rescue) just to make ends meet for him and his pregnant wife. Things go awry when, on his very first mission, Whit is forced to make an emergency 'slipstream jump' in order to avoid a deadly contagion that has made its way to Earth.

Events take a turn for the drastic when it becomes clear that the contagion originated at the INFINI station and one of the surviving inhabitants of the station has gone completely mad and plans to send the deadly intergalactic ooze to Earth to infect its population. A last-ditch rescue mission is mounted to save the planet and locate Carmichael in the process to determine if he can shed any light on what happened at the station. The team, comprised of some familiar names from the Australian film and TV industry, 'slipstreams' to INFINI, where their twenty-four hour journey will register as little over a minute in Earth time. Mucking around with time makes for an interesting MacGuffin and Abbess fails to capitalize on some of the natural story-telling opportunities to exploit this plot device. It’s clear, however, that Abbess and Brian Cachia (the film’s other writer) didn’t want to make BACK TO THE FUTURE. They wanted to pay homage to the great science fiction and horror genre film-making of a by-gone era when writers, directors and producers took risks with their material and sought to impress audiences with originality.

Once at INFINI, the rescue team don't take long to locate Carmichael, but soon after the body count begins to mount, as the elite rescue team succumb one-at-a-time to the contagion. The story becomes a little bit by-the-numbers through the mid-section as the body count progressively increases. Abbess does a nice job of off-setting the demise of his characters by keeping the film visually interesting and allowing each of his characters enough screen time in preceding scenes for their death to register emotionally with the audience. Besides MacPherson, Luke Ford’s Chester Huntington is the stand-out among the supporting cast. His Alpha-male smack-down with MacPherson toward the end of the film is highlight, as the two characters oscillate between friend and foe as they battle each other and their own deteriorating faculties. Among the dark themes, their ham-fisted antics bring some welcome levity to the story just when it needs it.

For film that was made under severe budget restrictions, there’s little doubt that Abbess and his crew have created a film that punches well above its weight in terms of quality. Some of the performances are uneven and could have been toned down, but the story does require the mania to ratchet-up as events hurtle toward the conclusion. At 110 minutes, INFINI runs longer than the standard Australian science fiction film. By comparison, THESE FINAL HOURS ran for 87 minutes and PREDESTINATION ran for 97 minutes, but INFINI never feels long. It’s no coincidence that the movies that Abbess cites as inspirations for INFINI, such as John Carpenter’s THE THING, BLADE RUNNER and ALIEN run for 109, 117 & 117 minutes respectively. The relative lack of visual effects, by comparison to today’s tent-pole movies, in older movies is a key reason for shorter running times and Abbess has had to do the same, focussing on story and character to help reward the viewer’s investment in his vision.