An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
No spoilers! If you would like spoilers – check out the Spoiler post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at 2016’s Incarnate
While searching for a demon from his past, a scientist (Aaron Eckhart) who kills demons by entering a victim’s subconscious is asked to save a child from a powerful entity.
Is Incarnate Scary?
Not even a little bit. There are no jump scares, no scenes that feel unsettling or create suspense, and no terrifying monsters. Overall you won’t leave Incarnate afraid of anything unless you just woke up from a nightmare where Aaron Eckhart was asking you about the time.
No Spoiler Review:
Incarnate is not good. To be fair it’s not anywhere near the worst movie you could watch about demonic possession and it has some effective world-building. The dialogue is okay and entertaining in some scenes.
The acting is nothing to write home about but no one does a bad job. It’s flat in some places but for characters like Ember, it kind of fits since he’s supposed to be a detached individual with only one agenda. So that kind of gets a pass, unfortunately, pretty much everything else about this movie has glaring problems.
Besides the two main characters, you don’t learn or know anything about any of the other characters. They’re just there to help progress the story and one specific character only exists to ask questions that lead to exposition.
Then you have the story beats/character actions that don’t make sense either. You have characters that are sitting around not doing anything and the moment something time-sensitive happens, they suddenly have to go do something else. There are other characters that put up barriers for the main protagonists which directly contradicts their previous actions that were aiding the protagonists.
Basically, these all feel like thinly-veiled forced attempts at tension that will leave you asking why or “what was the point of that”.
Overall I can only recommend Incarnate if you’re looking to watch a movie that you’ll have on in the background and that you’ll never have to explain because once you do, you’ll realize all the bad parts about it. Also if you’ve been wondering what Aaron Eckhart has been up to in the last decade.
Cast IMDB