AllMovie

A thought-provoking premise, a coolly intellectual script, haunting music, and a strong lead performance distinguish this junior high thriller despite its flat direction and sometimes forgettable supporting cast. There's quite a bit of pseudo-science in the script's depiction of clones who dream about one another's actions and share their prototype's memories, but underneath there are also very well-written conflicts between nature/nurture, reason/passion, and past/future. Writer/director Robert Weimer couldn't frame a decent action sequence if his life depended on it, while his expository dialogue scenes resort to static talking heads. Yet he does prove capable of cool suspense, gauzy melancholy, and haunting dream sequences, thanks in part to future soap star Martha Byrne's likable prepubescent vitriol and the haunting refrain of Paul Baillargeon's recurring song, "Anna's Reverie." Tortured by concentration camp nightmares in which the mournful tune figures heavily, Byrne's Anna becomes an existential heroine in pigtails: Anne Frank as science fiction survivor. As she taps away at her primitive CompuServe terminal, filches baubles from family friends, and patronizes grown-ups with mathematical precision, Anna personifies the pent-up frustration of every smart kid who's ever had to take orders from an obviously fallible grown-up. Her ultimate journey to self-realization may seem more than a little sentimental, but it's also filled with fertile subtext. Unfortunately, Donna Mitchell seems more somnambulant than enigmatic as mystery woman Michaela Dupont, and Mark Patton seems geekier and less sure of himself than he would as the tortured alterna-teen of Nightmare on Elm Street 2. Yet Dina Merrill proves coolly regal as Anna's science-obsessed mother, while Jack Gilford has fun as a kindly yet sinister scientist. The script's ominously uncertain ending typifies Anna to the Infinite Power: grown-up philosophizing dressed up in comic book clothes.