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By Robert Scucci
| Published
Low-budget sci-fi is the ultimate proving ground for filmmakers because if they don’t lean into their limitations, they’re dead in the water. When done right, we get films like Primer (2004), Coherence (2013), Empathy, Inc. (2018), and my new favorite comedy in this wheelhouse, 2014’s The Infinite Man. With a cast of three, no special effects to speak of, and what appears to be an abandoned motel serving as the film’s primary location, The Infinite Man is about as bare bones as it gets.
It’s a time travel story, but really about how a man’s insecurities catch up with him in the most unhinged way possible. He builds a device that he thinks will save his relationship and, through his own doing, makes everything infinitely worse for himself. It’s almost poetic how badly he screws everything up, and if you love a good comedy of errors that’s both low-budget and high-concept, The Infinite Man is exactly what you’re looking for.
You Can’t Control Everybody, Not Even Your Past Self
The plot of The Infinite Man is simple at first, but snowballs in complexity as it barrels through its second and third acts. Dean (Josh McConville) is on the verge of a nervous breakdown after his anniversary with Lana (Hanna Marshall) doesn’t exactly go as planned. The motel they stayed at the previous year is now abandoned, and all the activities Dean had in mind to woo his unenthusiastic partner never materialize.
Like clockwork, almost as if planned, Lana’s ex-boyfriend, Terry (Alex Dimitriades), shows up, shocks Dean with a cattle prod, and leaves with Lana. Dean is distressed about this for a number of reasons. Most importantly, his desire to control every minor detail is so intense that he doesn’t realize how unhappy Lana is. But what’s really grinding his gears is the fact that Lana only dated Terry, a self-proclaimed pole-vaulting legend, for two weeks several years earlier.
Broken by this turn of events, Dean locks himself in the motel for a year and builds a time machine that allows him to travel back to the day Lana left him, effectively giving himself a do-over. The machine works, and he’s able to interact with both his past self and the past version of Lana. His attempts to influence their behavior without being detected backfire immediately when he’s discovered, setting off a chain of events that results in multiple duplicates of himself, Lana, and even Terry, all of whom vaguely recall Dean’s meddling.
It gets to the point where present-day Dean forces one of the Lanas to wear an earpiece while speaking with another version of himself so he can tell her exactly what to say, convinced his influence will lead everybody toward the correct outcome. But every time Dean interferes, things continue to get worse, not only for him, but for everybody around him.
Sometimes It’s Just Best To Let It Go
Dean’s character in The Infinite Man is a fascinating study. He’s a brilliant inventor and clever as hell, but his personality is so grating that it’s hard to root for him. He makes too many assumptions about people, is far too insecure for his own good, and every motivation he has is fundamentally selfish. He got dumped for being a control freak, and his solution is to become an even bigger control freak.
As annoying as Dean is, that’s where all the humor comes from, so it’s a fair tradeoff. He constantly gets his ass handed to him by his own miscalculations, and when he finally has to interact with alternate versions of himself, he starts to realize that he’s the problem. His evolution across the film’s brief 85-minute runtime is beyond impressive because you start out hating the guy, but gradually grow to like him as he becomes more self-aware.
The Infinite Man is a brilliant example of what filmmakers like Hugh Sullivan can do with virtually no budget, a tight screenplay, and the right characters to bring a concept like this to life. If you’re a creator in any capacity, it should always be inspiring when somebody gets out there and makes something, limitations be damned.
As of this writing, you can stream The Infinite Man for free on Tubi.
