WISE Score
Avg. Tomatometer
A man realizes his hallucinations are actually memories from his past lives, then joins a secret society of reincarnating warriors to stop a world-ending plot.
5.517%
28
Skip this one. Infinite takes a fascinating idea—that our 'hallucinations' are actually memories of past lives—and immediately turns it into a dull, grey action movie that we’ve all seen a dozen times before.
With a dismal 17% on Rotten Tomatoes, it's clear the critics and the audience agree: this is a waste of a good premise. Unless your teen is a Mark Wahlberg completionist, there are much better sci-fi options that actually respect the viewer's intelligence.
Best for 13+ due to the intensity of the action and the dark framing of the main character's mental health at the start. It’s a loud, generic action movie that won't hold the interest of younger kids or anyone looking for a coherent story.
It models very little in the way of kindness or cooperation, focusing instead on a secret war where the solution to every problem is a high-speed chase or a sword fight.
The core concept of genetic memory and reincarnation is a solid sci-fi hook, but the movie wastes it on generic action tropes that feel like a budget version of The Matrix.
Standard PG-13 action violence. The biggest concern for younger viewers is the opening, which frames the protagonist's past-life memories as a severe mental health crisis and self-medication.
There is very little to take away here besides a few loud explosions. It doesn't engage with its own philosophical questions in any meaningful way.
Infinite is based on the novel The Reincarnationist Papers by D. Eric Maikranz, a book that actually spends time thinking through the implications of living forever. The movie, however, is much more interested in seeing how many cars it can flip. It stars Mark Wahlberg as Evan McCauley, a man who thinks he's schizophrenic until he's told he's actually an 'Infinite.'
The film tries very hard to capture the 'chosen one' energy of The Matrix, but it lacks the style and the philosophical weight. The action is competent because Antoine Fuqua is a professional, but it's entirely forgettable. For a movie about the weight of history and the power of memory, it feels remarkably thin.
The dialogue is often clunky, and the villain's motivation—destroying all life to stop the 'torture' of reincarnation—is a bit of a stretch even for a sci-fi flick. If your family is looking for high-concept sci-fi, you'd be better off revisiting Inception or even the first Matrix movie. Those films actually do something with their big ideas, whereas Infinite just uses them as an excuse for more gunfire.
If you're looking for a better way to spend two hours, check out our guide to Sci-Fi Movies for Teens That Are Actually Good.
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