'Infini' is a low budget Australian sci-fi horror that combines elements of 'Blade Runner', 'The Thing', 'Alien' and even 'The Shining' in quite a pleasing way, but fails to be wholly entertaining or memorable.
Starting with some explanatory text, we find that the Earth is overpopulated and lots of people are forced into working for security forces that sort of teleport them to distant outposts to fix them or rescue people or whatever. There's a big catastrophe, and a squad is sent to the furthest outpost from Earth where they find that the frozen shit has very much hit the space fan. It sports a wilfully unorganised narrative, which I think many viewers will find unpleasantly jarring, but I kind of enjoyed the lack of structure, reminiscent of the infected people's state of mind. Every character is infected fairly early on, pretty much removing any hope. Watching their actions I gradually lost my sense of rooting for one character over another as they were all mentally unstable, and the main reason for viewing became physiological study and morbid curiosity.
Starting with some explanatory text, we find that the Earth is overpopulated and lots of people are forced into working for security forces that sort of teleport them to distant outposts to fix them or rescue people or whatever. There's a big catastrophe, and a squad is sent to the furthest outpost from Earth where they find that the frozen shit has very much hit the space fan. It sports a wilfully unorganised narrative, which I think many viewers will find unpleasantly jarring, but I kind of enjoyed the lack of structure, reminiscent of the infected people's state of mind. Every character is infected fairly early on, pretty much removing any hope. Watching their actions I gradually lost my sense of rooting for one character over another as they were all mentally unstable, and the main reason for viewing became physiological study and morbid curiosity.
I enjoyed the tone though, and it was a good looking movie (the sets really suited, very industrial and 'Alien'-esque). Their take on zombies were cool too, I found the self mutilation and taunting scarier than classic zombies (possibly because I'm just so used to regular zombies, but I did like the psychological element here for sure).
While most of the characters weren't thoroughly explored, they didn't broadcast their simplicity to me either. Their throwaway dialogue wasn't trying too hard to present one as the funny one, one as the bad ass, the coward, the leader, etc.
I don't want to make it seem like this film is perfect, though. The condition is quite simplistic (at least at first) - it's basically just played out as the sane part of the infected person fighting to control a growing desire for mindless violence - but I liked the concept. There's some sloppy editing too (I'm thinking the repetition of the final speech and the flash forward at the start here in particular), and this is where the low budget shows most, but overall they did a good job of it and the acting was solid and really carried the film.
It gets increasingly introspective towards the end, which is nice. I didn't really connect to the whole family love win out out over base desires thing, but it's a nice message I guess. The final twist of them being replicated completely and finishing the mission to return the Earth was fan-freaking-tastic. The best part is that they all seem to be at least partly aware that they've changed somehow, and that they could be taking whatever change happened to them back to Earth, but they just want to be home safe with their families and not dead after all, and we don't even know how much of them are really human. The threat wasn't the bomb, it was them all along. They are the payload, because selfishness wins out against both love and hate.
I mean it's left a little more open than that - maybe the alien life form was finally taught empathy, reconstructed the humans, and sent them on their way - but that's not how I interpreted it.
Infini: 50.9