INCARNATION (2016 - Serbian)

Studio:       Jinga Films
Director:    Filip Kovacevic
Writer:       Filip Kovacevic, Masa Senicic, Ivan Stancic
Producer:  Filip Kovacevic
Stars:     Stojan Djordjevic, Daca Vidosavljevic, Sten Zendor, Vidan Dojcinovic, Bogdan Petrovic, Tihomir Stanic, Dejan Cicmilovic, Zarko Stepanov

Review Score:

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Summary:

A man with no memory of his identity is caught in a recurring loop where he is pursued and murdered by four masked assassins.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

A man wakes on a park bench in a public square where four pedestrian walkways intersect at a fountain. The man has no memory of his name and his face is oddly blurred whenever he tries looking at his reflection.

Four armed assassins in black suits and white masks approach the square from one of the streets. They open fire, chase the man down another street, and ultimately kill him.

The man wakes again on the park bench. Confused, the man realizes he is somehow caught in a recurring loop when events play out as they did previously. The four assassins chase the man down the street once more and shoot him when he is cornered.

The man wakes on the bench a third time. While fleeing, he runs into a lamppost and inadvertently knocks himself unconscious.

This time, the man wakes in a hospital after a brief flashback to an assassin pointing a gun at a child next to his murdered parents. The man can now see his reflection. A doctor explains there is something in the man’s blood that cannot be identified. A police officer looking for clues to the man’s identity finds only a phone and a matchbook in his possession. The masked assassins stalk the hospital halls and kill the man once again.

The man wakes back in the square. Underneath the bench, he finds a stone wrapped in newspaper taped to the seat. The man takes the stone, and this time goes down a different street where he hides in a building. There, he meets a doctor who is alarmed to see him. The doctor escapes when the man is distracted. The masked assassins storm the building and chase the man back to the street. He encounters the doctor again, who admits that he was contracted to administer the serum that erased his memory, but knows no more than that. However, the man realizes the doctor is also the person who left the stone as a clue. The man follows the pedestrian pathway until he finds an empty spot in the pavement where the stone fits. Inside the space is a paper with the numbers “541” written on it. The masked assassins catch up to the man and execute him again.

The man wakes on the park bench. A child playing nearby tells the man about secret subterranean tunnels. The man takes this third route and hides underground until he emerges in a large open field where he collapses.

The man has another flashback to a boy staring down an assassin’s gun barrel. He wakes still in the remote countryside and tries to survive until the assassins find him and kill him.

The man wakes on the park bench one more time. This time, he decides to go down the street he has yet to try, which is in the direction from where the assassins begin their pursuit. The man notices that the assassins do not recognize him when he isn’t running from them. He ends up in a building where he wrestles with one of the gunmen and manages to take him captive.

The man forces the assassin at gunpoint to dial whoever contracted him on the man’s cellphone. The assassin inputs the numbers “63147,” but does not know the rest. The man completes the number with “541,” found written on the paper earlier. He gets a busy signal. The man tries calling again from a nearby landline and his own cellphone rings.

With the serum wearing off, the man realizes that there were once five masked assassins and he was one of them. He had a change of heart when faced with killing the boy and put out a hit on himself because he had tired of a life of killing. He also contracted the doctor to erase his memory. The other three assassins find him. The man tells them he was once part of their group before shooting himself in the head.

The man wakes on the bench one final time. He decides to take the one action he never tried by staying on the bench. The assassins confront him. An assassin recognizes the man and gives him back his gun. The man refuses to take it. Panic breaks out among the nearby pedestrians. An assassin ends up shooting the man anyway.

The park bench loop begins again, but the man is not there. His voice-over explains that he does not know where he is.

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Review:

Serbian mystery-thriller “Incarnation” can be spoiled easily.  Not by revealing the ending, but by revealing the ending isn’t the revelatory missing link you desperately want it to be.

A man with no memory of his identity and an inability to see his reflection is caught in a recurring nightmare.  He wakes on a park bench in a crowded public square and is promptly pursued by four masked assassins before being shot in the head.  The man doesn’t die.  He merely wakes back on the bench to relive the chase and his execution, again and again and again.

Four streets intersect at the fountain in front of the bench.  With every replay of events, the man realizes he has more than one option of where he can run.  Each direction holds a critical clue and if the man can figure out how all of them piece together, he might find a way to close the loop, and finally stop taking bullets to his brain.

Who is this man?  What happened to his memory?  Where do the assassins come from?  Why is he their target?  How is it possible to repeat the same series of events no matter how many times he dies?

These are only a handful of questions inspired by the imagination as “Incarnation” races through scenes fueled by stylized suspense, flashy action, and mind-bending mysteries of flashbacks and flashforwards.  Some, though definitely not all, the movie actually has answers for.  “Incarnation” is “Memento” meets “Groundhog Day” by way of “Jason Bourne” and “Lost.”  It’s just that last influence gumming up the gears that gets in the way of something grander.  A third act of ambiguity and unsatisfying resolutions sees an exhilarating sprint ending at finish line tape that doesn’t crisply snap so much as it listlessly falls to the ground.

“Incarnation” is tightly packed, figuratively and literally.  The public square is an ingenious setting for a limited funds production looking for a controlled location whose regular reuse is motivated by story.  Pedestrian walkways give way to fast-moving corridor chases of flying feet and furious gunplay keeping energy high and intensity higher.  Atmosphere can be so charged it’s a wonder why a number of passersby are completely unfazed by the gunfire and screams echoing off beautiful buildings nearby.

The puzzling premise hits with its hook from the very first cycle and that sharp point digs deeper as a cryptic conspiracy unfolds.  Additional personalities poke into the plot.  Backstory breadcrumbs birth new possibilities.  Curious clues like sequential numbers and seemingly plain stones introduce intrigue at intervals that keep mental wheels spinning with wonder at where it all leads.

“Incarnation” has all the right bait on its lure, yet when it comes time to reel, the line sags with uncertainty over how hard to pull.  Watching “Incarnation” really does recall a condensed experience of seeing TV’s “Lost” progress from first season to last.  The start is powerfully promising and stays there as new building blocks expand the mystery beyond initial predictability.  Unable to anticipate all outcomes, your mind concedes trust that creators have control in their hands.  Then starts suspicion the endgame is unfinished.  And when all is at last exposed, an unimpressive conclusion cheats the setup out of a great payoff, and viewers out of complete compensation.

Aside from a few underwhelming digital effects like blood spray standing still while the paper it is on flaps in a breeze, the film looks fantastic.  Filip Kovacevic’s direction stages pacing with quick-cut precision and with co-writers Masa Senicic and Ivan Stancic, he puts together two-thirds of a compelling suspense-thriller accented by breathless action.  Had the last act twists and eventual explanation maintained the concept’s out-of-the-gate grip, then the takeaway could be how much “Incarnation” does well, instead of how it leaves a final taste tainted by disappointment.

NOTE: The film’s Serbian title is “Inkarnacija.”

Review Score:  65

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