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May 25, 2015 By Zach Hollwedel Web Exclusive

A rescue team is transported to a remote space station to save a lone soldier after a biological outbreak wipes out an entire army. Infini should be that straightforward; yet, somehow director Shane Abbess, who co-wrote the screenplay with rookie scribe Brian Cachia, manages to deliver a film too convoluted and (even worse) too long to retain much viewer interest beyond the first fifteen minutes.

From the get-go, Abbess and Cachia weigh down their premise with unnecessary information. Even before the film fades in, a series of title cards struggles to conveythe notion of “slipstreaming,” a process whereby organic matter is digitized and beamed instantaneously across the universe. This, only after we also learn that it’s the 23^rd century and extreme poverty has sent most of humanity’s blue collar workers off-world for work (the commute via slipstreaming). Only after this deluge of information are we introduced to the film’s characters-literally ten at a time at one point. There are too many faces to keep track of, too many names we don’t have the time or desire to learn. In short, there’s so much exposition that it all becomes irrelevant. (Given how little Abbess and Cachia fall back on some of their setup, it’s mostly moot anyway.)

Only then does the story begin. A squad of soldiers head to one of the most uninhabitable outposts in the universe to rescue Whit Carmichael, the aforementioned lone survivor. Carmichael and the new squad soon succumb to the same zombie-like plague that afflicted the annihilated army. Blood-even skin contact-from an infected carrier essentially causes a murderous madness to consumer its host, and soon Carmichael and the others are viciously attacking one another. The plague takes hold in minutes, though through some fluke, Carmichael is able to stave off infection for about two hours (the length of a film, surprise, surprise). It doesn’t really make sense. The disease-let’s just call it a zombie situation, though that’s not exactly accurate, either-is really just the setup for a lot of prolonged fight scenes, which someone should have edited way, way down. The same goes for the entire film.

Perhaps Abbess and Cachia were worried their audience wouldn’t be able to grasp the ideas they were casting. Or maybe they were too enamored of their work to see its weak spots. Whatever the case, they hammer every point, scene, and fight to death. What’s even more damning, though, is that the plot only ever-at best-makes marginal sense during the overwrought scenes. If the film wass half an hour shorter, it would be a hell of a lot better. The plot would move faster, the action would intensify, and I bet the cowriters would find more than a few places to trim. As it stands, Infini needs a substantial re-edit before it’s worthy of an audience’s time.

www.infinimovie.com

Author rating: 4/10