Review: Infini


Mining operations in the future involve teleporting/slipstreaming between planets. It’s not a safe gig, as deaths can occur, and there are checks on re-entry to make sure you don’t bring anything contagious back home. Expectant father Whit Carmichael (Dan MacPherson) is one such teleporter embarking on his latest mission. However, things don’t go well, and Carmichael finds himself stranded on the alien planet. Another team (played by the likes of Luke Ford, Grace Huang, Dwaine Stevenson, Luke Hemsworth, and Kevin Copeland) is sent to Infini to stop an impending threat to Earth, with the search and rescue of Carmichael a secondary concern.

 

Imperfect but not-bad 2015 sci-fi ‘mind fuck’ flick from Aussie writer-director Shane Abbess is at least preferable to another dreary film about Western Sydney heroin addicts or dinky-di soldiers and jolly jumbucks. It’s also a giant leap forward from Abbess’ previous dreary, cheapo sci-fi/fantasy “Gabriel”. Unfortunately, it’s another Aussie film stupidly trying to pass itself off as American, though the Aussie cast do a reasonable job with the Yank accents. The phony-sounding technical jargon was much harder to stomach for me, to be honest. It’s a well-shot film (the lighting is particularly nice) by DOP Carl Robertson, but the modest budget shows with cheesy sound/visual FX throughout (Good music score by co-story writer Brian Cacchia, though). Thankfully there’s not much in the way of visual FX on show anyway, but what little there is…isn’t good.

 

Daniel MacPherson (best known here as a former soap actor and former “Dancing With the Stars” host) is typically rock-solid playing the oh-so Australian-sounding Whit Carmichael (sigh), but I wish the very talented Luke Ford were given a lot more to say and do. He’s a very versatile actor (just look at his work in the amazing “The Black Balloon” and then…everything else he has done) far better than the role he has been afforded here. He’s by far the best actor in the film, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see Luke Hemsworth (Seriously, they’re breeding like rabbits!) become something in the future. There’s plenty of influences on show here, you’ll spot similarities to “Interstellar”, “Freejack”, “Aliens”, and “Pitch Black”, and I must admit I did wish the film were just a tad more original than it is. It’s not fatal, but it does work against the film somewhat.

 

If you like your sci-fi with a heavy dose of the trippy and psychological, you’ll like this a lot more than I did. I think it needed a bigger budget and a lot more Luke Ford, but I will always encourage Aussie filmmakers to make more genre films, and there’s been much worse than this one.

 

Rating: C+

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