This movie review will have minor spoilers regarding the film's plot, so if you haven't watch the movie and want to avoid spoilers, please leave to read other posts in this blog right away.
I had never heard about this movie before, and I just noticed it because of the poster and film's trailer that had been shown at my local cineplex while I was there to watch another movie. I have no knowledge regarding what's the movie about and I was only interested to watch it because the trailer reminds me of the movies Event Horizon and Sunshine, both which I loved. And I love science fiction movies, so why not? But in the end, did I like the movie?
Let's start by discussing the plot. Going to the cinema blind (and by blind I mean not knowing exactly what the movie was about before entering the cinema hall) was kind of nervous for me as I know science fiction movie can be hard to understand sometimes, and I was even more nervous when the movie started with several sentences talking about how in the 23rd century almost 95% of human population are below the poverty line and to get higher paid jobs most of them involved in high-risk jobs like working at a space station doing mining works. It also explained some stuff about Splitstream and how it is a risky way of "transporting" from one place to another as it can be quite unstable and something about data being corrupted. To be honest, I don't really remember what they were trying to explain about the Splitstream thing, it's more like a teleportation method if I'm not mistaken but I don't think they even mentioned the word "teleportation" in the film. I was a bit confused and I don't even know if my explanation was right, but at least that's what I understand from the lines. So yes, after reading the lines and the first scene was showed (which makes me even more confused), I suspected that I won't be able to understand this movie and would left the cinema disappointed.
But imagine my surprise when as the movie continued, I began to fit the puzzles of the plot piece by piece, and finally making the progress of understanding what's the story about, and what's the story trying to deliver. I wouldn't say the story was great, but it was good enough to keep me engaged and piqued my curiosity in where this will all lead to. By the end of the movie, I was quite happy with it and impressed by how the story was not just a science fiction story, but also delivers important message like what is life and what's being a human all about. I do have a problem with the whole Splitstream thing that was explained in the beginning of the movie though; they made it sound like it was important in the plot and how it will impact the characters, but to me it just seemed like nothing more than a mere "transportation" for the characters.
This is not a science fiction movie to the level of Prometheus, Aliens, Avatar, Interstellar or even Sunshine which the trailer for this movie reminded me about - and by saying that I mean in visuals kind of way with computer-generated effects that those movies were known for. The special effects were not in a large scale as the movies I've mentioned and were very minimal, but they were still very good, believable and efficiently executed when needed. I believe the minimal special effects is also the reason why this movie relies heavily on the characters that were in it and the casts performances. I don't even believe that any movie needs great special effects to be great, so I applaud Infini for being able to deliver a good science fiction movie (which typically would rely heavily on CGI) even with what they had.
Speaking about characters, I must say that this movie focus 70-80% on the character Whit Carmichael played by Daniel MacPherson, and lucky for us he was very, very good in this movie. I love how he convincingly portrayed the unstable mental state of his character in the hostile environment of the space station. It was believable and a good performance from him. The rest of the casts were great too. There are moments in the movie where some characters had to go all crazy and psychotic, and let me tell you those scenes were all pretty well acted, especially the characters played by Luke Ford and Dwaine Stevenson.
There were a lot of characters stuck there in the desolate space station too; 8 of them with the search and rescue team plus the survivor Whit Carmichael, and this large cast was also one of the reason that I'm afraid I won't be able to follow the story for this movie that much because there were too many of them, too many names too remember. But the story helps you to differentiate the characters and their personalities, with some of the characters have background story to help shape their personalities, while others sadly were left behind, but still I was able to recognize each one of them by the time the credits roll in. It was interesting that the first and one of the final scene in the movie were actually the same scene (with one of the final scene was like an extended version from the first one) and how I was so confused seeing all these characters in the first scene, wondering whether I could recognize all of them, and yet in the final scene I was able to tell who each of them are. It was a great touch/editing by the director (or whoever that decided that) and shows that the movie managed to separate the characters from each other quite nicely to make them recognizable eventhough not all of them receive the same amount of screen time.
To summarize this up, Infini is a fine movie. It has a decent story, good special effects and most importantly, great performances from the casts. If you're not a fan of science fiction movies, then I think this movie might not suit you. If you're a science fiction movies fan but was expecting a movie with a large scale special effects the likes of Prometheus and Sunshine, then this movie might not suit you as well. But if you like a decent story about human's inner demon that happen to be set on a space station in a galaxy far away, then you're in for a treat. To be honest, you don't even have to like science fiction movie to enjoy Infini because I feel like the story is universal enough and can be enjoyed by everyone...but in the end, it will all up to you on what type of movie do you want to watch in the cinema.
I give Infini the scores of 8.2/10.
Images source from IMDb.
No comments:
Post a Comment