Incarnate 2016

In this tense supernatural thriller, an 11-year-old boy named Cameron Sparrow is attacked by a hooded stranger who seemingly intends to kill him. Cameron turns the tables and kills the intruder, and when the camera lingers on his eyes, they glow red, revealing that he is possessed by a demon named Maggie. The shocking moment sets off a chain of events that hinge on the conflict between the boy’s body and the entity inhabiting it.

Across town, Dr. Seth Ember encounters a man named Henry in a club and forces him to confront the fact that his companion is a demon inhabiting his body. They manage to escape back to reality, and we learn that Ember, who moves through the world in a wheelchair, has made a crusade of hunting demons that slip into human hosts. His associate Oliver warns that the demonic realm is learning to adapt to Ember’s methods, suggesting that a simple escape back to reality may not always be possible for him.

A visit from a Vatican representative named Camilla pushes Ember toward a reluctant nomadic exorcist path. Camilla asks him to exorcise Cameron, but Ember insists that his methods are not traditional exorcisms. Camilla hints that the demon could be someone Ember already knows, which adds a personal, unsettling layer to the case. Seeking clarity, Ember consults a priest named Felix, who confirms that the demon could indeed be Maggie. Felix offers a vial of blood from a possessed person that would grant Ember about ten seconds of lucid clarity—just enough time to end his own life—but Ember refuses this grim option.

Back with Cameron, Ember explains his unique approach: demons do not truly possess or control the host; they drift into comforting dreams, lulling the host into unawareness while the demon uses the body. By entering the host’s subconscious and helping the person realize they are dreaming, Ember aims to evict the demon from within. The team—Ember, Oliver, and their third member Riley—prepare for the eviction, with Riley explaining that Ember must enter a near-death state to synchronize his brain frequencies with Cameron’s, granting him access to Cameron’s dream. The cost is steep: Ember has only about eight minutes before his own heart can give out.

Ember enters Cameron’s dream and finds him with his father, Dan, but a seizure interrupts the mission and forces Ember to exit and be revived. He insists that Dan be present to help evict the demon, and Cameron’s mother, Lindsay, reluctantly agrees, given the couple’s troubled past. Dan’s presence initially seems to aid the effort, but Maggie lashes out at him. Ember pleads with Maggie to release Dan since the demon has a different target in mind—Ember himself. The demon relents, but Dan dies from his injuries during the struggle. Lindsay presses Ember for his history with the demon; Ember reveals that he once discovered he could perform astral projection and enter the dreams of possessed people, but hid this power to live a normal life. That suppression granted him a personal tragedy: years earlier, a car accident involving his own wife and child had left him wheelchair-bound and driven him to hunt Maggie ever since, a demon he named after the woman it possessed.

With the aid of Felix—who, unbeknownst to them, has become possessed—Ember returns to Cameron’s dream. Ember uses a ring Cameron had received from his real father to jolt the boy into realizing the illusion surrounding him. They break free from Maggie and wake in a hospital, only for Ember to awaken again in his own dream, and then to awaken once more in the real world, this time in the hospital beside his wife and son. In a desperate bid to save Cameron, Ember begs Maggie to release Cameron and take him instead. Maggie agrees to the sacrifice, but the dramatic turn of events continues to unfold as Ember awakens for real and Riley administers the blood vial to him.

With the blood coursing through his veins, Ember uses his ten seconds of lucid time to sprint through the apartment window, throwing himself into danger as his body shatters against the outside world. He dies, and Riley warns everyone to hold back from touching his body. Paramedics fight to resuscitate Ember, joined by Camilla, who remains at his side. A heartbeat returns, seemingly offering a reprieve, and Maggie seizes the moment to possess Camilla before Ember dies for good, implying that the demon’s hold extends beyond Cameron’s body and into someone connected to Ember’s broader mission.

The narrative leaves viewers with a chilling blend of tragedy and eerie inevitability: Ember’s life ends in a final act of self-sacrifice to free the boy and confront Maggie, yet the demon’s reach persists, now incarnated within Camilla. The struggle between eviction and possession threads through every major beat, turning a personal mission into a high-stakes battle that blurs the line between dream and reality, life and death, and the human will to survive against a malevolent, unseen force.