Incarnate is the latest terror tale from Blumhouse, purveyors of such franchises as The Purge, Insidious, and Paranormal Activity. You’ll find no ghostly apparitions within this film, although it does inhabit another oft-illuminated corner of the horror genre these days: demonic possession. Yes, this is an exorcism-centric film, albeit with a twist. Instead of utilizing religion to evict demons from their hosts, our protagonist Dr. Seth Ember (Aaron Eckhart) use technology to enter the mind of the afflicted and help them fight from within.
It’s an intriguing premise. The film is basically a low budget mixture of concepts pulled from Inception and The Exorcist, with a dash of Insidious for added flavor. Unfortunately, Incarnate does not manage to reach the heights of any of those three films. The potential is there, but little is done to capitalize on it. If you are walking into this feature hoping for a visual feast or a nice helping of new iconic imagery or moments, you will leave disappointed. That said, the film does have its merits.
Eckhart, in a role seemingly better suited for someone like Thomas Jane, hams it up pretty good as an alcoholic obsessive on a vengeful mission against the forces of darkness. Hamminess is not an inherently bad thing, despite what some might say, and the film actually benefits from the energy he is force-feeding it. In fact, aside from a nice small supporting turn from Matt Nable (Riddick, Arrow) and an appearance by the always-welcome Tomas Arana (The Bodyguard, The Church), he’s really the only one giving a fully awake performance in the film.
Whether the director or the screenwriter or both are at fault, virtually all of the female performances in this film call completely flat. Outside of Dr. Ember’s somewhat spunky female assistant, our primary female characters come in the form of a Vatican representative (Academy Award nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno) and the mother of the afflicted child (Carice van Houten). Both actresses seem to be on autopilot, with little life or passion to be found within their performances. Considering one of them is playing someone whose 11-year-old son’s life is on the line, this is a bit of an emotional buzzkill and frequently stops the film dead in its tracks.
Speaking of the son, David Mazouz does a great job of breathing life into his role during the scenes where he’s playing the boy. Unfortunately those are spread a bit thinly, as he is possessed for the majority of his scenes. This means that a massive chunk of his role is spent glaring at the other characters while his voice is altered or outright dubbed. Such is the nature of possession films, but I do wish we had been given a bit more of his life before a demon took up residence inside him.
This is a film that gets to the point rather quickly, with very little time wasted on moments outside of the primary conflict at hand. Outside of it possibly being in need of some more character-building moments with the boy and his mother, this mostly works to the film’s advantage. At a lean 91 minutes, it gets in, gets the job done, and leaves before its welcome has been worn out. That’s sadly more than I can say for a lot of movies these day, be they horror films or otherwise.
Incarnate is a very disjointed picture even beyond its performances. Part of this has to do with the patchwork nature of the script. While unoriginal in ingredients, it does manage to contain a few nuggets of intrigue in the way it pieces its influences together. There’s potential within the film’s concepts, but most of it remains untapped by the time the credits role. Much like other Blumhouse films like Ouija and The Purge, there’s the potential here for a much better sequel to be built upon the ideas present. I feel like most seasoned genre directors could knock such concepts out of the park (or at least give a solid line drive). Somehow I doubt that a follow-up will be forthcoming, however. Nor is one particularly warranted.
Incarnate is director Brad Peyton’s first foray into horror feature filmmaking and it shows. Primarily set in two locations, these two main spaces are sparsely decorated. They don’t feel lived in at all. That might be a bit of the point when it comes to the apartment setting, but it ultimately serves to make the film look cheaper than it is. The bland direction isn’t incompetent by any means, but it is certainly pedestrian, even by low budget studio horror standards. The scares, most of which are of the jump variety, mainly come more from the music and editing than any visual flair.
The excitement inherent in some of Peyton’s blockbuster fare like San Andreas is nowhere to be found here. Low budget filmmaking, at least in terms of suspense tales, might just not be his forte. Lucky for him and for us, his next is another big budget genre picture with Dwayne Johnson. I’ll show up for that film, the giant monster video game adaptation Rampage, opening weekend but I can’t see myself excited to ever sit down with Incarnate again. This isn’t a bad film. It’s merely a perfectly average horror offering with a few interesting concepts that are executed in a perfectly average way. It might occasionally hold your interest in the moment if you see it this weekend, but don’t expect it to linger in your mind for long after you leave the theater.
