Incarnate (2016)

[Holmes]

On the surface, Incarnate is a novel variation on the demonic-possession sub-genre—a paralyzed scientist (Aaron Eckhart) enters his patients' subconscious minds, Inception-style, to convince them to liberate themselves from paranormal, parasitic entities—but the execution largely falls short of the concept's potential. A few instances of dreadful computer-generated imagery excepted, director Brad Peyton (San Andreas) stages the shadow-veiled, mostly apartment-bound action with a journeyman's competency, but he does not possess the vivid and wild imagination required to capitalize on the neat idea of rendering a demon-distorted, labyrinthine mind as a physical space. He sets each mental incursion in a single place—a nightclub, a fairground—when a delirious, Escher-esque approach to space and time is called for. Peyton should have more closely studied the style and tone of past films which presumably inspired his own, including Altered States and The Cell. Despite this dearth of invention, the film is modestly involving from scene to scene, and it benefits from the charisma and gravitas of its leading man. Since his blistering performance in In the Company of Men almost 20 years ago, Eckhart has flirted time and time again with the A list (a few high-profile nominations here, a key role in a superhero epic there) without ever finding a permanent place on it, but the conviction and thousand-yard-stare intensity he brings to even a low-budget, in-and-out genre exercise is admirable.

C+