Film
Dr. Ember (Aaron Eckhart – Sully, I, Frankenstein), a scientist who discovers at an early age that he has the ability to enter the subconscious minds of the people who are possessed by entities. After a long search for the entity responsible for the death of his wife, he is approached by a representative from the Vatican, Camilla (Catalina Sandino Moreno – A Most Violent Year), who believes she has found the entity sought by Dr. Ember, a particularly evil, and powerful one, named Maggie.
Maggie has possessed a young boy, Cameron (David Mazouz). With the help of his team, Oliver (Keir O’Donnell – American Sniper, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) and Riley (Emily Jackson), Dr. Ember must now save him from the grips of this demo, who’s powers he has never seen before. All the while, he faces a bleak and depressing past, and having Cameron’s mother, Lindsey (Carice van Houten – The Fifth Estate) and father Dan (Matt Nable – Hacksaw Ridge, Riddick) face their own very trouble relationship.
Incarnate is another Blumhouse film, and timed for disc release right on October, as much of the world gets ready to be scared, for Halloween. It’s an average horror, with some thrills, and a slightly different take on the story of evil and demons. It’s a pity the disc is marred by some technical issues with audio and video though.
The story for Incarnate is pretty straight forward, with no real plot twists, or diversions. The film tells it’s story, getting straight to the point. It is an entertaining ride, albeit not a very scary one. The scars do come in a psychological way, avoiding the cheaper jump-scares or gore, seen in all too many films in this genre.
Incarnate, a horror trying to create a unique place for itself in the genre, even if it misses the mark by much. One to add to your horror playlist.
Disc
Incarnate is a run of the mill horror, that would be a great additional to an October horror-fest playlist. Technically, the disc is of not such great quality.
There are some issues with the video and audio encoding, resulting in visible artefacts, and sounds pops. These all seem indicative of an issue during manufacturing, as the same video issues appear on all computer and set-top boxes used during testing, with the audio issues appearing whether the surround or stereo soundtracks are used. Multiple copies of the disc were also tested, with the same result.
Incarnate is available now, to purchase on disc, in South Africa.
Video
Video is encoded at a high average bitrate, however, there is some serious fault with this encoding, resulting in artefacts that appear on screen, as momentary MPEG errors. These seem to increase towards the middle of the film, and then taper off.
These glaring issues aside, which do become noticeable, and a distraction, the rest of the video is still watchable, if it doesn’t ruin the experience for the viewer, that is.
Video on the menu system and auto-play trailers is compressed more than the main feature, meaning there is some colour bleed visible. Normally this would mean there is more disc space for the main feature, but there are too many issues with this main feature for any sort of fair comparison.
Audio
Audio is encoded at a high average bitrate, however, as with the video, there are some issues that become more evident towards the middle of the disc, and then seem to decrease again towards the end of the film. The audio issues are more noticeable then the video, and are honestly a pain. They affect both the surround and stereo soundtracks, eventually becoming so noticeable that the movie experience is ruined.
Audio for the main feature is presented in both a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, and a stereo 2.0 downmix. These are not accessible through any of the disc menus, so would need to be set by the set-top box hardware, or respective software player.
Navigation
Navigation is simple, and easy to follow. The main menu is static, with accompanying music. There are text options to select to play the main feature, or select scenes.
The scenes sub-menus comprise of four, colour, motion thumbnails each, for a total of twelve chapters. These thumbnails are not very large, and while numbered, they are not labelled, meaning that there would be some guesswork involved when trying to navigation to a specific part in the main feature.
Bonus Features
There are no bonus features on the disc, other than trailers for The Monster, Sleepless, and The Hunter’s Prayer.
These trailers auto-play at the beginning of the disc, and can be fast-forwarded, or individually skipped, but are not accessible again from the discs menu system.
