Incubus (2006) by Anya Camilleri

Director: Anya Camilleri

Year: 2006

Country: United Kingdom/Romania

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Slasher

Plot:

After crashing their truck, friends decide to go look for help and come across a deserted house in the woods where they realize a series of gruesome medical experiments were conducted on a condemned serial killer that starts to affect their minds like him and must try to get out alive.

Review:

This here actually wasn't all that bad and had some good parts to it. One of the better ones is the overall look of the house and its thrilling atmosphere from the rather creepy and eerie location used. Since most of the time is spent in the hallways of the underground facility, this one gets really creepy in the first half with its usually-darkened state, the rash of discoveries, and the long, winding design that generates some big, tense moments in here. The early discoveries are the best, as they rely on flashlights exploring the facility leading to a couple of tense passages within the film as they head down the darkened areas. From the grim discoveries left lying around in bloody pools to the scenes where they're going through the laboratory with all the equipment on display, there's enough here to make it feel really creepy.

As well, there's also a really great story to keep this one feeling strong with all the strange medical experiments lying around the facility, their limited knowledge of what's going on, and the mystery gradually becoming clearer the longer they're in danger about the study going on with him which is rather intriguing, all backed up with a couple of dead bodies and a fantastic revelation sequence, this one has a pretty strong back-story. There's also a rather disturbing backstory that involves tongues which scores points for both being bloody as well as being genuinely disturbing and scores the film's biggest shock scene. The last big part here that works is the gore, which comes from some rather tense stalking scenes here from their first encounter in the tunnel to the big confrontation inside his protective cell. These here are what hold the film up.

This didn't have a lot of flaws, but they were pretty big. The first is that there's a great deal of selected stupidity in here that doesn't always work. Frankly, choosing to go into an uncharted house in the dark is a really unwise move, as is the film's tendency to have them remain instead of trying to get out, as once it's established that something is wrong the focus shifts away from trying to escape and becomes more about trying to understand the situation. That makes no sense, as the situation grows to concern the others about the situation in what quickly grows tiring, the fact that nearly everything in here, from top-secret military experiments to how to operate the machinery and much, much more in here's explained by one of the characters despite there being no knowledgeable instances before where there's evidence of that. Also, some pacing issues really keep the kills all the back half of the film rather than spaced out more evenly. Along with the film's somewhat convoluted story, which can get a little over-explained at times, there's not much else wrong here.

Overview: ***/5

A surprisingly good slasher that does have some issues, this one comes off better than expected and generates a lot to like about it that holds it up over those drawbacks. Give it a shot if you're intrigued by the concept or the style of film employed here while most others out there should heed caution.