By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Brad Peyton
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Carice Van Houten, David Mazouz, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Emjay Anthony, Breanne Hill, Matt Nable and Kier O’Donnell.
Rating: Poor
Brad Peyton, director of “San Andreas” brings the supernatural thriller and horror film “Incarnate” and I consider this a huge disrespect to the genre.
The movie tells the story of Dr. Seth Ember (Aaron Eckhart) an exorcist who is in a wheelchair due to a fatal car accident, which caused the life of his wife and son.
He is not a conventional exorcist that is affiliated with the church. In fact Dr. Ember has a method that performs the exorcism through the subconscious of the possesed, making him very succesful and well known.
Eventually he will be pursued by Camila (Catalina Sandino Moreno) a vatican representative who is in charge of the case of an 11 year old boy who is possessed by a demon.
After being skeptical of the situation, Dr. Ember decides to take on the case and study the young boy. Not only this will be his most difficult exorcism but it will test his faith in all levels. Now he has to save the child before it’s too late and the demon will be in his soul for eternity.
There is nothing that I can aknolewdege of“Incarnate.” It is one of the most ridicoulous thrillers I’ve seen in a while and it’s an ultimate rip off and I disrespect towards a movie like “The Exocist”.
Aaron Eckhart is a very talented actor and he delivered two fantastic performances this year in Clint Eastwood’s “Sully” where he portrays Jeff Skiles, the second captain of Chesley Sullenberger and Ben Younger’s “Bleed for This” where he portrays Vinny Pazienza’s trainer Kevin Rooney.
The problem with Eckhart is that this is not the only time he has chosen this kind of roles. In 2014 he did the same thing with “I Frankenstein” which was as ridicoulous and stupid as “Incarnate”.
The direction by Brad Peyton was all over the place and the performances of the cast were less compelling and convincing.
The sceenplay written by Ronnie Christensen was badly written and like the direction it was all around. The movie should have started with Aaron Eckhart’s character since he is supposed to be the lead. Instead it opens with a kid who has a possession.
The flashbacks were useless as the whole movie itself. The ending instead of being afraid I was laughing and there was a time that I was close to walk out of the theater.
I mentioned before that Aaron Eckhart is a very talented actor but the problem is the roles he has choose in the years making him one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood despite of his unique talent.
The movie that I like him the most was in Jason Reitman’s “Thank You For Smoking” were he portrayed the tobacco lobbyst Nick Naylor. When I saw this film back in 2006 I praised Eckhart’s performance. But eventually his career has been in downhill and has made very bad decisions in terms of the roles he has chosen.
The major problem of the movie besides the directing and acting was the screenplay. It needed a lot of work and the writer in this case Ronnie Christensen didn’t bother to spend more time working with his characters and this fiasco was the result of it.
I was so mad at this film that I consider it not only a disrespect to the genre but to film itself.
Sadly I do admit that the concept was interesting but the execution was very poor.
With that being said “Incarnation” is so far the worst movie of 2016 and please do not waste your time and money with this piece of trash.