Infini, film review

(15) Shane Abbess, 110 mins Starring: Daniel MacPherson, Luke Hemsworth, Grace Huang

This clunky, claustrophobic, Aussie-made dystopian thriller has a plot that seems to have been constructed out of odds and ends from Ridley Scott and Christopher Nolan sci-fi movies. It is set in the 23rd century. Humanity is in turmoil, with 95 per cent of the world's population living "on or below" the poverty line and everyone dependent on off-world mining resources. Whit Carmichael (Daniel MacPherson) is a rugged everyman with a pregnant wife who takes on a dangerous but high-paying job that entails being teleported to a galactic outpost. (Jargon-filled intertitles explain that "off-earth transit" is achieved through "slipstreaming" – turning matter into data signals and transmitting it into far-flung corners of the universe.)

The mission goes wrong. He is the lone survivor of a biological outbreak and ends up stranded on a mining station, Infini. A search team is dispatched to rescue him and stem the outbreak. Infini doesn't have the budget or the originality to do justice to its own ambitions. Its plot is hard to follow. There are too many murky scenes of characters in space helmets and suits, grimacing and yelling as they wander through maze-like, studio-constructed sets.