Incarnate Review (Film, 2016)

content warning: gore, child abuse, medical/surgical footage, violence against women

A child struggling to cope with his parents’ divorce becomes possessed by a demon. A scientist might hold the key to freeing him. He has developed a method to enter people’s dreams and help them escape whatever is haunting them.

Incarnate is a by-the-numbers possession film with a sci-fi twist. Dr. Ember’s methods include medication and monitoring cables. He enters their unconscious mind, their dream state brought on by the possession, and helps guide them out.

Sci-fi/possession hybrids are nothing new. One of the most loathed sequels of all time is Exorcist II: The Heretic, a sequel to the film that both made the possession film mainstream entertainment and set the template for all future Western possession films. It’s also just an un-credited adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s story “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” which was a cross between hypnotism and possession. I quite like the film knowing its literary inspiration, but the use of sci-fi was a step too far to please the audience that loved to be scared by The Exorcist.

The reluctance to accept the sci-fi influence on possession stories is suspension of disbelief. We accept stories of people being able to use science to connect with people’s dreams. We accept stories of demons taking over innocent bodies. Both are extreme concepts that already set people on edge. Audiences are as obsessed with over the top dream psychology films like Inception as they are with over the top exorcism/possession films like Veronica. Combine them together and it’s too much of a stretch to believe.

Incarnate handles all of its elements well. They do not linger on the science and the faith, and both the scientist and the Vatican acknowledge the validity of each other’s methods. The inciting moment of the plot is a representative of the Vatican reaching out to Dr. Ember for help with the boy’s possession. Their methods are different, even disagreeing on terminology, but they both use their researched and practiced methods to free people from literal or metaphorical demons.

While I’ve seen many horror/sci-fi films try to have it both ways in a possession film before, I haven’t seen one that presents both methods as valid. Incarnate favors the science of Dr. Ember, sure, but it doesn’t pretend like the more religious methods can’t work. His objections are moral, not efficacy.

The issue with Incarnate is that it is too referential to films that have come before. The dream skipping is straight out of Inception; the mother fighting on her own for her child against scientists and priests who won’t just give her an answer is straight out of The Exorcist; even the child’s possession and the technology are lifted from Insidious. The only new concept here is acknowledging faith and science can coexist in these moments. Everything else is a pale imitation of far superior films.

Incarnate is streaming on Netflix.

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