Incarnate (2016) Review!!

Synopsis – A scientist with the ability to enter the subconscious minds of the possessed must save a young boy from the grips of a demon with powers never seen before, while facing the horrors of his past.

My Take – The horror film genre is not known for having the greatest plots, and often has a frail story to give purpose to the scares. Out of the various sub genres it offers, exorcism films have never done it for me really. Sure, I can recognize ‘The Exorcist’ as a culturally important film that examined the role of religion in film and more specifically in horror films, but I was never scared of the film, even as a child. The only actual exorcism film I can claim to actually like is ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose,’ a film that could be argued more as a courtroom drama than that of an exorcism horror film, but contains both to satisfy genre nerds. While it could be argued that the films in ‘The Conjuring’ series are exorcism films, I see them more as haunted house flicks more than anything. But just because I don’t particularly like exorcism films doesn’t mean that audiences don’t, which is why we’re here with yet another exorcism film in this Blumhouse Production. Based on an original script by Ronnie Christensen, writer of the Halle Berry shark-attack flop Dark Tide; like that film, this was quietly deposited in theaters with almost no fanfare, save for a very silly trailer and a handful of web ads. Going by the point of originality, the film has a new concept going for it, something on the lines of how Inception would have been if it was a horror film. Yet, despite the novel factor going for it, the film fails to provide any scares & has not one character that is likable. Running for about 91 minutes including the end credits, the film feels less like a full feature & more like an episode of CW’s long running Supernatural. But alas, if the film was worth seeing you would have probably heard of it by now. It’s obvious how the film has released on a soft weekend despite the presence of a known face, my guess is the producers were looking to grab a couple millions before the word of mouth spread.

The story follows Seth Ember (Aaron Eckhart), an exorcist (though he gives himself the title of “evictor”) trapped in a wheelchair after a car accident that killed his wife and son. Ember has the power to enter the mind of the possessed and destroy the demon from the inside out. Growing lethargic and cynical, due to his cosmic struggle with a demon named “Maggie” (why that name, of all names, remains unclear) who targeted him for destruction when he awakened to his destiny as an “incarnate” and killed his wife (Karolina Wydra) and son in a head-on collision that left him paralyzed shortly thereafter. Although the Catholic Church is a fan of his services, Ember is hardly religious, seeing himself as nothing more than a repo man, who is picking up from the mess they keep creating. After certain hesitation and insistence of a representative of The Vatican (Catalina Sandino Moreno), Ember agrees to take upon the case of a young boy named Cameron (David Mazouz), who turns out to be possessed by the same demon Ember has been hunting. With the help of his team (Keir O’Donnell and Emily Jackson) and the boy’s divorced parents (Carice Van Houten and Matt Nable), they must save the boy and destroy the demon once and for all. This is not a typical ghost story, hence, it’s not scary and it’s not trying to scare you (At least I think, because if it is it does do a bad job of it). It feels more like its exploring or expanding the concept of a religious-less exorcism with a little background story to keep it interesting and keep it moving. In regards to the creepiness, this film can’t help you there either with only the deep seeded voice and a few soulless eyes being the tools to unnerve you. Like I said, the film focuses on thrills and plot than scares. Cameron’s initial possession is staged with a nicely done bit of physical business, and the first act of the film in general holds the promise of an intriguing variation on the usual deviltry, with an emphasis on character over sensationalism. And despite that focus, director Brad Peyton (San Andreas) had a good start, but couldn’t take the film to its full potential. For one thing, the pace becomes very rushed at times, a few sequences being so dramatically built up only to quickly end in a bang, crunch, or loud scream. The rushed pace robs the film of the suspense it desires, but also limits the amount of character development. Yes, we get insight into Ember’s back-story, but other parts of his past are left unexplained. As for the other characters, there tales are either nonexistent, or so simplistic/formulaic that the characters didn’t need to exist in the film, his fellow workers, the mother, and even the demons would have benefited from some more thinking time. The film houses one character and that character is based on one trait: his blinding determination. Our other characters include a mother who can only be described as that, a father with a bipolar understanding of affectation that turns on a dime for plot convenience, a surrogate for the Vatican that supplies no tension to the plot when she easily could have (to better narrative effect), and two assistants to the exorcism that blather pseudo-science nonsense for the guise of authenticity. Every line of dialogue feels like a forced bit of exposition. There is no life to it at all. You can tell that a script is problematic when it uses words like Ash and Ember to name its characters, because you know subtlety. Director Brad Peyton spins his tale with style and flow, switching from among reality to the dream world, to the tricky dream world-within-a-dream world. He really wants to make you think you’re in one plane of existential consciousness when you’re really in another, so it amounts to a guessing game that has you scanning the screen for clues that tip you off as to what’s really going on.

The scariest among the tip-offs is the black eyes that characters in possession-fueled dream realms seem to have. Also, chillingly, clocks stand still. Peyton tends to get into trouble by establishing rules like that, only to flout them later on just to play ‘gotcha’ once again. The scenes that take place inside the minds of the possessed that he deals with are actually some of the best scenes in the film, playing with the perspective of reality nicely and subtly enough that it doesn’t constitute as overkill. But the problems of the film come when Ember finds himself out of the dream. From the start, it’s clear that the screenplay for the film has no problem having inane dialogue and it almost revels in it at a point. On a technical level, the film is not much better. Aside from some basic cityscape shots, the entire film is shot on cramped indoor sets that make for few quality shots. The room in which the majority of the action takes place is simply an empty, dark room. The abbreviated running time isn’t the only sign that the film has undergone a bit of tinkering since it was shot three years ago. A scene involving the death of a supporting character was evidently a reshoot. The film’s “novel” angle is a poor, ill-conceived attempt at bankability. In the world of this film, a person’s soul is a wifi hotspot, REM sleep is equivalent to a near death state, and demons don’t seem to do anything except jump from host to host. Speaking of the demons, don’t expect any top notch, award winning monsters that will make you pee your pants or stay up late. Much of the creatures are reduced to blood shot eyes, or human avatars with dark black eyes that are a little freaky. I had hoped that there would be a little more sustenance behind these creatures, especially with their importance to the story. The big, bad leader of the bunch gets a lot of hype, and good news is you get to see it at the end or parts of it. Rather than reveal the entire demonic spectacle, they decided to show very little of the demon’s true form. Fine actresses Carice van Houten (Game of Thrones) and Catalina Sandino Moreno (The Bridge) seem overqualified for the thin roles as they appear on screen. In particular, we barely get to know Cameron and his mom at all before the demon gets into him, so his plight doesn’t connect as strongly as it should. David Mazouz (Gotham), who incidentally also did the whole creepy kid thing in another poorly made Blumhouse release from earlier this year, The Darkness, seemed confused most of the time here. Matt Nable (Arrow), Karolina Wydra, Emily Jackson, Tomas Arana and Keir O’Donnell play their parts well. I’m not really sure why Hollywood keeps trying to push these edgy roles on Aaron Eckhart, it’s seriously not working. Here, Eckhart struggles to muster up anything beyond glorified camp. Placing a pretty-boy actress in a wheelchair with a bad wig and a scowl doesn’t constitute a performance, not does it make Ember a believable protagonist. On the whole, ‘Incarnate’ is an interesting take on a tired genre, but fizzles out the moment it steps into the predictable zone, thereby becoming a colossal mishandling of the horror film protocol.