INCARNATION (2022)

Studio:   Cinedigm
Director: Isaac Walsh
Writer:    Isaac Walsh, Tyler Clair Smith
Producer: Mike Hatton
Stars:    Taye Diggs, Jessica Uberuaga, Michael Madsen

Review Score:

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Summary:

A struggling couple invokes a malevolent demon when they turn to occult magic to solve their financial problems.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Brad and his wife Jess move into a new home in the San Fernando Valley where they plan on converting an old church into a brewpub business. Brad and Jess meet Peter, the quirky owner whose father built the house. The couple also begins experiencing minor instances of paranormal activity, such as hearing knocking noises and seeing doors open by themselves.

While home alone, Jess investigates a mysterious bedroom whose door had been inexplicably locked. Jess becomes trapped inside the room while a flaming pan burns in the kitchen downstairs. Jess finds a box containing a handwritten grimoire, several gold coins, and occult paraphernalia. The door suddenly unlocks. Jess exits with the box, but falls unconscious from smoke filling the house. Brad returns in time to extinguish the fire and help his wife recover.

Brad later discovers that the grimoire contains rituals for invoking the demon Mammon. Brad idly reads part of the book out loud, and he becomes startled when another gold coin magically appears in his hand.

Peter visits Brad. Brad and Peter talk about how Jess is anxious to start a family, but Brad prefers to focus on starting their business. Brad asks Peter about the grimoire. Peter mentions that his father was fascinated with the occult, and he gives Brad permission to keep the book.

Brad learns that a woman who had been impeding his renovation progress suddenly died and he has been given a $900,000 grant to restore the historic church he had been converting. Brad connects the sudden windfall to the spell he recited aloud.

Jess secretly spends $30,000 on a fertility treatment. After Brad learns his wife spent their remaining savings without talking to him first, the couple has a heated argument about their troubled finances and differing views on having a child.

Brad performs another ritual from the journal. When Jess catches him in the act, Brad explains how he believes his accidental invocation led to the $900,000 grant. Thinking they can use the demon’s magic again to make more money, Jess participates in Brad’s ritual by offering her blood.

Brad’s key investor pulls out of his brewpub project. Jess suggests that Brad ask Peter to invest his wealth instead.

Jess spontaneously starts bleeding from the slash wound on her arm. She then has a vision of the demon Mammon choking her.

Peter comes over to have dinner with Brad. Upon learning dinner was a ruse so Brad could pitch him on a business investment, Peter becomes irate and threatens to kick Brad out of the house. Concerned about eviction, Brad knocks Peter unconscious.

Brad forces Jess to help him tie up Peter in the bedroom where they found the Mammon materials. Brad forces Peter to sign a contract for a $200,000 investment, and Brad claims he will release Peter after the bank closes their deal.

Brad and Jess perform another ritual from the book. A trunk starts shaking in the bedroom where Peter is held captive. Unbeknownst to the couple, the demon Mammon emerges from the trunk and possesses Peter.

Brad wakes up in the morning to find Jess bleeding from a gash on her back in the shape of Mammon’s symbol. Brad finds a secret page in the grimoire that reveals Jess will be sacrificed to the demon unless another person is killed in her place. While trying to get up the nerve to murder Peter, Brad flashes back to a traumatic childhood memory in which his father clubbed a stray dog to death because Brad could not do it like his father demanded. Jess tries to break into the other bedroom to stop Brad from going through with the act, but Brad ends up stabbing Peter to death.

While trying to dispose of the corpse later, Brad and Jess learn that Mammon now inhabits Peter’s resurrected body. Mammon compels Brad to worship him. After Brad gets on his knees, Mammon drops more gold coins that Brad subsequently sells for $50,000. Mammon guarantees he will give Brad success and Jess a family in exchange for continued loyalty and blood.

As time goes by, Jess becomes pregnant. Upon finding Mammon’s signature black feather in their crib, Brad and Jess realize the demon wants their unborn baby. Brad tries to confront Mammon, but Mammon stabs Brad to death. Mammon then attacks Jess.

Jess recovers in the hospital to find her baby cut out of her womb. Back at the house, Mammon continues to inhabit Peter’s body.

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Review:

On average, it usually takes me somewhere in the neighborhood of three hours to write a review once I have all of my initial notes organized. The process ordinarily involves reevaluating evolving thoughts, reworking structure, then rewriting until I get to a point where I can be proud enough to hit ‘Publish.’

That won’t be the case with “Incarnation,” a throwaway thriller in which Taye Diggs and Jessica Uberuaga purchase, from Michael Madsen, a home where they semi-inadvertently invoke a demon. Whether you only watch the trailer or, Crom forbid, the movie itself, it won’t take more than a minute to identify “Incarnation” as a hasty horror movie exploding with telltale signs of a fast, cheap, fully forgettable indie.

Lucky for me then, I don’t need to waste any hours reevaluating, reworking, or rewriting anything. I can just bullet point bits of blandness like they’re “You know exactly what kind of movie I’m talking about, right?” elbow nudges and then meet you at the bottom in mere minutes.

• The first dead giveaway of “Incarnation” having fallen off an assembly line for DTV dullness is its distinct shot-on-digital patina. Every frame of the film has that milky, bleached look of coming from a camera overexposing exteriors and flattening interiors so there’s no shape to any scenery.

• Not that looking good matters much since “Incarnation” only uses one generic location. You’ll recognize it from every other VOD quickie about a couple in a suburban haunted house. The home consists of nothing but white walls and indistinguishable furnishings, unless you count the empty bottles of Maker’s Mark that laughably adorn entryway nooks like they’re supposed to be valuable vases or something.

• Outside of a fleeting flashback that’s as unnecessary as the need to see this movie, “Incarnation” only features three actors. One of those performers is a person whose best days are behind him. Another is a person whose career peak is even further behind him. It’s a 50/50 split if their scenes together, particularly the opening, owe their awkwardness to sloppy improv, or merely the men repeatedly forgetting their lines.

• 24 people have title cards awarding them some sort of producer credit, with most of them being “executive.” By contrast, the end credit scroll lasts less than 60 seconds because of how few people contributed to the actual production crew of camera assistants, gaffers, electricians, etc.

• “Incarnation’s” idea of horror consists almost exclusively of pat paranormal activity like flickering lights, knocking noises, and doors creaking open on their own. Yeah, try not to wet your pants from the fear. Or, more likely, from drinking too much booze in order to make it through the movie and then dozing through your next bathroom break.

• If you’re not busy wondering why you haven’t hit the Stop button yet, you can thrill to the interim action of someone preparing an omelet, someone else filling out a bank loan application, digging a tree stump out of a dirt patch, making idle conversation on the couch while concurrently futzing on the phone, moaning about mandated building restorations, bargaining with skeptical investors, staring at computer screens for seated internet searches, or Michael Madsen talking about his torn rotator cuff before hocking a loogie, then hocking a second loogie because the first one apparently didn’t get the job done.

“Incarnation” is another common case of a makeshift production company having access to a vacant house and enough cash to attract a low-level celebrity as a headliner. So they threw together exactly what anyone would expect those conditions to create: an unoriginal filler film interested only in the bare minimum, allowing everyone involved to get in and get out as quickly as possible. That includes the audience at least. Now I have a spare two hours and 50 minutes to do something else. I’ll probably start by forgetting everything about “Incarnation,” which shouldn’t take long since it has nothing worth remembering in the first place.

Review Score: 20

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