Review by Ben Bussey
Ambition; perhaps both the most vital, yet also most hazardous attribute a filmmaker can have. If you aim high and deliver, you will vindicate yourself and by all rights should be applauded for it. However, if you fall short of the mark you may well end up the subject of a hundred thousand derogatory tweets, talk-back comments and message board posts. On the evidence of his debut film Inkubus, Glen Ciano is clearly an ambitious filmmaker. He’s hired Robert Englund as his titular villain, an apparently immortal demon who has been merrily murdering his way through history, and William Forsythe as a grizzled old cop whose first encounter with the demon many years earlier left him traumatised. So, with two genre heavyweights headlining the cast and nods toward a potentially epic mythology, Inkubus is clearly intended as something more than your average direct-to-DVD horror movie; a field in which most filmmakers seem content to aim low. Unfortunately, when pretty much everything else betrays the low-rent nature of the production, and the whole endeavour is executed with such a lack of invention or atmosphere, there’s no escaping the sense that Ciano and co have set themselves up for a fall.
True to form for a low budget debut film, the action takes place largely in a single location over a single evening, with a hint of Tarantino-ish jumping back and forth in time. Things kick off with a hospital-set birth sequence; given that this is a horror movie, you can make an educated guess as to how things turn out. Next thing we know the bereaved father, Detective Tom Caretti (Joey Fatone, who I can happily say I did not recognise as a former member of N-Sync), is sitting in a rubber room in a straightjacket, recounting the events that led him there: the night his police station was visited by Inkubus. From then on, we stay for the most part in the police station, where they’re operating on a skeleton crew in the process of shutting down (echoes of Assault On Precinct 13), and are subsequently unprepared for a guy to show up holding a dead girl’s head, claiming responsibility for hundreds of notorious murders going back centuries. Knowing his rights, Inkubus makes his phone call to retired Detective Gil Diamante (Forsythe), the one cop who ever came close to taking him down. Diamante readily agrees to come to the station, warning Caretti to expect the unexpected; and so begins a game of psychological cat-and-mouse which, naturally, will wind up killing most of the people involved.
It’s not a bad premise by any means, and it’s helped significantly by the presence of Englund and Forsythe. As a talkative demon with the ability to alter reality, Inkubus clearly isn’t a million miles away from Freddy, but Englund’s performance here is considerably more understated; he’s more of a quiet, refined, world-weary psycho killer, which feels appropriate given Englund’s obviously not as young as he was. Equally world-weary and even more grizzled is Forsythe, delivering every line as though he’d just sucked a hundred Marlboros a second earlier. I can’t imagine either actor would rank this amongst their best work, but like the best old professionals they give it their all regardless.
Unfortunately, barely anything else in Inkubus works at all. The supporting cast are bland, the story does not grip, and the aesthetics leave a great deal to be desired (insert yet another rant about how shitty DV looks). Less discerning gore fans may be satisfied, as there are a few enjoyably bloody moments; see the picture above. However, those hoping for respite in the form of T&A will be sorely disappointed, as while there are a couple of sex scenes – one of which features the very attractive though not especially compelling Michelle Ray Smith – it’s all strictly clothes-on. This, I think, indicates how Ciano is trying to avoid the usual pitfalls of direct-to-DVD; hoping to de-emphasise titilation in favour of real drama and chills.
Sad to say, he’s fighting a losing battle. Not unlike Noboru Iguchi’s latest, Tomie Unlimited, Inkubus is neither sophisticated enough to satisfy the erudite genre aficionado, nor is it enough fun for Friday night beer and pizza viewing. It is of course commendable that Ciano and his team have made efforts to go above and beyond the confines of their price range to make something that stands apart, but Inkubus simply isn’t strong enough in concept or execution for this to be the case. Were it not for the presence of Englund and Forsythe it’s hard to see many people being interested in the film at all, and even with them, the end results are frankly less than memorable.
Trinity X release Inkubus to Region 2 DVD on February 13th.