If Event Horizon, Pandorum, and Alien had a baby—but that baby was dropped on its head, raised on a diet of energy drinks and existential whining, and grew up thinking whispering equals tension—you’d have Infini (2015). Directed by Shane Abbess, this Australian sci-fi slog is proof that you can fill a spaceship with yelling soldiers, buckets of blood, and metaphysical babble and still end up with a movie that feels like watching paint dry in zero gravity.
It’s the kind of film that takes place “in the early 23rd century,” which is shorthand for: “Don’t ask too many questions because the script doesn’t have answers.”
Slipstreaming Into Confusion
The setup sounds promising enough. A mining station called O.I. Infini has gone rogue, a rescue team must teleport (sorry, Slipstream) in, and there’s a mysterious contagion turning people into homicidal lunatics. So far, so Doom, right? But where Doom gave us demon-slaying catharsis, Infini gives us endless exposition delivered by sweaty people who all sound like they’re auditioning for a reboot of Full Metal Jacket—in space.
The “Slipstream” teleportation system is supposed to be cutting-edge sci-fi, but it mostly feels like a plot device invented to save on spaceship-set costs. It’s like the filmmakers realized halfway through: “Wait, we can’t afford actual space travel. Just say they blink there.” Unfortunately, the characters arrive not in wonder but in a frozen hellscape of dim corridors and industrial noise that looks like an air-conditioning plant built by Satan’s HVAC team.
Characters You’ll Forget Before the Next Scene
Our protagonist, Whit Carmichael (Daniel MacPherson), is a man with a square jaw, a pregnant wife, and all the emotional range of an unplugged Roomba. He’s the “new recruit” archetype we’ve seen in every space-horror movie since the dawn of time—a blank slate whose only defining feature is that he looks good in panic sweat. His wife, Lisa, appears briefly to remind us that she’s pregnant, which is shorthand for “someone to cry at the end.”
The rest of the cast—Luke Hemsworth, Grace Huang, Luke Ford, and a dozen other well-armed redshirts—blend together into one large, angry Australian accent. They spend most of their screen time shouting each other’s names, threatening to shoot one another, or bleeding in slow motion. If you told me the script directions just read “YELL MORE” on every page, I’d believe it.
It’s like watching a rugby team experience a collective mental breakdown inside a steel hallway.
Space Madness, But Make It Boring
The plot unravels—or more accurately, slogs—when the rescue teams discover the “infection.” This isn’t your run-of-the-mill zombie virus; it’s alien goop that mimics human flesh and drives people into violent rages. Essentially, space slime that turns you into a drama queen.
This could’ve been terrifying. Instead, it’s confusing, repetitive, and occasionally laughable. There’s blood everywhere, but none of it seems to matter. People scream, die, resurrect, and scream again, but the stakes feel lower than a rerun of Star Trek: Enterprise. The pacing is a war crime—every scene drags like the movie itself has been infected by the ooze of bad editing.
Director Shane Abbess clearly wanted Infini to be philosophical—an allegory for humanity’s self-destructive impulses, perhaps—but the result feels like a freshman essay titled “Violence Is Bad (In Space).” Characters monologue about the nature of existence while dripping sweat and alien goo, and it’s impossible not to laugh. The script mistakes volume for intensity and confusion for depth.
The Science of Nonsense
The film’s scientific logic collapses faster than a dying star. The time dilation premise—supposedly a key plot point—shows up only when the movie remembers it exists. One team experiences “severe time dilation,” yet everyone keeps showing up at the same time anyway. The Slipstream teleportation is equally arbitrary: sometimes instantaneous, sometimes deadly, always plot-convenient.
By the third act, even the laws of biology give up. The alien “ooze” infects, mimics, and controls living tissue, but somehow also resurrects people after they shoot themselves. It’s like The Thing decided to host a motivational seminar about teamwork.
When Whit delivers a dramatic speech to the ooze, scolding it for “harnessing only the violent instincts of humanity,” I actually laughed out loud. The man gives a TED Talk to slime. It’s meant to be profound; it lands like a breakup text to a puddle.
A Soundtrack That Hates You
If there’s one thing Infini does consistently, it’s make noise. The soundtrack is an unholy blend of pounding drums, ominous whooshes, and reverb so thick it could drown a small animal. Every line of dialogue sounds like it was recorded in a washing machine.
The result is a sonic assault that makes the movie feel twice as long. By the 90-minute mark, you’re begging for silence, for death, for anything but another sweaty close-up of Luke Hemsworth’s face illuminated by a flickering strobe light.
Set Design by the Department of Dim Corridors
Visually, Infini wants to look gritty and industrial, but it mostly looks underlit and underfunded. The mining station set is just a maze of metal walkways, pipes, and what I assume are recycled Alien leftovers painted gray. Every scene looks the same—foggy, metallic, and confusingly wet.
To be fair, there are moments when the cinematography almost works. A few slow pans across corpses and flickering lights hint at something atmospheric. But just when you think the film might build tension, another character screams or punches something, and the mood collapses faster than the lighting budget.
The Ending: Philosophical, Pretentious, and Pointless
After two hours of yelling, bleeding, and ooze-based moralizing, Infini tries to pull a redemption arc. Whit kills himself (mercifully ending his dialogue), but the goo resurrects everyone and they suddenly become chill about the whole experience. They teleport home, pass a contamination scan (because apparently interdimensional slime doesn’t show up on routine tests), and Whit reunites with his wife for a Lifetime-movie-style hug.
The final shot teases that maybe the goo has followed them home—because of course it has. Evil always survives, especially when it’s made of bad metaphors.
Performances: All Sweat, No Soul
Daniel MacPherson tries valiantly to give his character emotional depth, but it’s like watching someone cry in a wind tunnel. Grace Huang brings some stoic presence to her scenes, though the script gives her roughly three emotions: anger, despair, and “covered in slime.” Luke Hemsworth looks like he’s been trapped in a cryogenic chamber of regret.
No one here is bad—they’re just victims of a movie that confuses chaos for character development.
Final Verdict: An Infinity of Missed Opportunities
Infini wants to be Alien. It wants to be Event Horizon. Hell, it even wants to be Solaris. What it actually is, however, is a feature-length panic attack filmed inside a broken air duct.
The movie’s ambition is admirable, but ambition without coherence is just noise—and this film is loud. It’s a philosophical horror movie that doesn’t understand philosophy, a science fiction movie that doesn’t understand science, and a horror movie that’s only scary if you’re afraid of poor lighting.
If there’s a moral, it’s probably “Don’t Slipstream into unknown territories.” But the real moral is: “Don’t watch Infiniunless you’re trapped in a space station with no other entertainment options.”
In the end, Infini achieves something remarkable—it makes infinity feel short by comparison to its runtime.
Rating: 1.5 black holes out of 5. The horror isn’t in space; it’s in the editing room.
