Breaking Infinity (2023) review: Time is of the essence, among other things

The feature-length debut for director Marianna Dean was billed by many as a tad ambitious with its limited finances, and whilst the former Age of Ultron actress gets full marks for bravery, this time-bending thriller does seem a little out of its depth. The budget explains only part of Breaking Infinity’s shortcomings, however.

Although it tries valiantly to win us over with a new spin on time travel, it’s cast adrift into space pretty much from the get-go. Yet, this could have been forgiven if some of the basics had been nailed down.

Liam (Neil Bishop) is a research scientist at a lab dealing in cosmic background radiation. Somehow he’s become ‘unstuck’ in time, an almost literally nightmarish scenario from which there seems no escape, unless the help of Dr. Emma (Zoe Cunningham) and a mysterious old man (Martin Bishop) can see a way clear. As Liam’s fluid existence grows ever more expansive, the danger to his very life gets more and more real.

We do get some sense of Liam’s struggle, but even though his main aim is to change the course of events, Breaking Infinity seldom grips and excites. Whether it’s to do with this being an indie sci-fi trying it’s best to do an impersonation of an all-singing, all-dancing Hollywood production, who knows.

Sure, the truly great time travel pictures do special effects, action sequences, etc, really well, but their status as classics has less to do with all of that and much more in taking you on a journey with them. Basically, they’re products of good scripts rather than megabucks budgets; writer David Trotti has unfortunately come up short here. There are so many back-and-forths that each scene is rendered too short-lived to give us time to get on board with Liam.

Another hallmark of the greats is that while time travel can be a complex animal in some ways, the concepts of these films are relatively easy to grasp – think The Terminator and a cyborg being sent back from the future. To paraphrase the latter, your mind could indeed go crazy thinking about it, but not keep going round and round without so much as a clue as to where the story might go.

Of course, we know there’s bound to be a twist in the tale, but the problem is that when we’re edging closer to that point we’re not caring too much what it might be, so when it does arrive it almost feels like a waste of time. In amongst all of this, it’s difficult to empathise with any of the characters and attempts to bring humour and pithy asides into the dialogue fall flat.

This is sci-fi that presents a neat idea but ultimately bites off more than it can chew, and so while it’s one hell of a journey for our hero, it’s not so much for us. Breaking Infinity hits UK cinemas on June 1st and will be available on all major digital platforms from July 3rd.