Incarnate [Review by SpecialK]

Yes, they are clapping for YOU! Don’t look so surprised! Please, come on up and join me here on the stage. Oops, careful not to step on The Disappointments Room as you climb over it. Oh, careful there too, don’t trip over Jack Goes Home—by the way, sorry, Jack, I just couldn’t even bring myself to review you, and even though you made me wish I could split our award tonight, it can only go to one film. Them’s the rules.

Ah great, our awardee is finally to the stage. Let’s all give another big round of applause for the film that wins SpecialK’s Worst “Terror” Film of the Year Award for 2016—Incarnate! Perhaps it’s fitting that this year’s WTF award goes to a film pulled off by the director of San Andreas and writer of star-studded films I’d never heard of. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to provide Incarnate here with a proper introduction before we formally present it with the WTF award.

Our film opens quite normally of course, with the possession of a young boy by a demon who was hiding in a rabid, wall-climbing homeless person.   Seen it before, amirite? Well from there things really spice up. We meet “Dr.” Seth Ember, played by Aaron Eckhart. You might see a bit of bias reveal itself here, because I’ve never quite been able to enjoy Eckhart in a film, although I guess he did okay in The Dark Knight. To be fair, I also never saw Thank You for Smoking, which I understand was fantastic. Nevertheless, Eckhart’s work as Ember in this film pushed my decision over the edge tonight.

Ember is a kind of non-religious exorcist-slash-doctor-slash-hypnotist who uses his innate talent (his ability to enter the minds of the possessed) to “evict” demons from people. Aided by electrodes affixed to his temples and a healthy sac-o-IV fluid, he mentally enters the delusional fantasy life the demon has created in the mind of the possessee, and reminds the poor sap about his much more disappointing real life. The resulting wave of depression I suppose somehow magically expels the demon.

Why has Ember dedicated his life to this noble calling? Well, he didn’t at first. He tried to ignore his gift, but a demon named Maggie literally crashed into his life by killing his wife and child in a car accident, leaving Ember wheelchair-bound and lonely. He has spent every moment since then seeking to destroy Maggie, who is intent on torturing Ember for no apparent reason. When Ember hears from the Vatican (represented by a stunning lawyer with a briefcase full of cash) that Maggie now possesses a young boy, Ember is on the case, with his two quirky, gothy, button-pushing, number-crunching, quip-producing assistants in tow.

I mean, the stuff of plot legend, right? But it doesn’t end there. The most WTF award-worthy part of this film is that it promises demonic horror, but ends up delivering almost zero effective scares. In their place, we are instead treated to some left-field sci-fi “theories” on tackling possession. We even get to enjoy a delightfully distracting side story in which Ember hangs out with an old priest friend who has trapped a possessed exorcist in a high-tech chamber and has been experimenting on him for years, harvesting his blood in search of that unattainable possession vaccine. Of course I could go on and on about how Incarnate’s plot, characters, acting, and effects culminate in tonight’s award, but I’ll stop because I can see here that our awardee is getting bashful.

Like any deserving WTF awardee, Incarnate leaves its audience with so many unanswered questions. For example, why does Dr. Ember’s personal tragedy leave him with an equally-tragic cropped wig? Why must one horror film capture three different stunning middle-aged brunette characters, each with her own special brand of European accent?   How does a film about demonic possession result in so many more unintended laughs than intended scares? The world may never know.

But one thing we do know for sure is that there is no film more deserving of this year’s WTF award than Incarnate. You may be wondering if I’m jumping the gun here, with an entire twelfth of the year left. I assure you, I could not be more confident in my choice.

SpecialK Verdict: Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I am honored to present SpecialK’s Worst “Terror” Film of the Year Award to Incarnate! Congrats on receiving the WTF award for 2016!

Incarnate opens Friday December 2.

Never miss a review — sign up for email updates to the right, or like The Parsing Haus on Facebook