The Good

An interesting mix of genres went into the story of this film.

The Bad

No extra features.

Tara Reid headlines a cast of college students who stumble onto terror in Incubus. After getting lost on an excursion, Jay (Reid) and her friends find a laboratory that has long been shut down. Tired of being lost, they enter the facility and soon realize their asylum is filled with dead bodies. Continuing to search around this place they come across The Sleeper who has the ability to dream his way into these people's minds.

Soon, Jay's friends become killers with her being the object of their deathly desires. Suddenly Jay must figure out a way to get out of the labratory, but the worst part of all is the knowledge that if she falls asleep, Jay will become the next victim of The Sleeper. Melding aspects of the usual teen horror flicks with portions of The Cell, Incubus isn't so much different as it is interesting.

Features

No extras came with this DVD.

Video

1.85:1 - Anamorphic Widescreen. This film originally debuted on the internet. In fact, if you click here then you can read a review where Tara Reid talks all about the making of the movie. However, it doesn't seem as if it has been shot for that, and actually director Anya Camilleri has made a very interesting use of color all through out this movie. As I said, this film has all the conventions that we are used to ( people being lost, the grungy area that serves as a refuge, the impending doom around every corner), however it does look somewhat different than these movies usually do.

Audio

Dolby Digital. English 5.1 - Dolby Digital. Subtitled in English and French. Mastered in High Definition. Close Captioned. The sound on this movie was probably the only part of it that was exactly how I expected it to be. It wasn't bad, it just didn't offer up anything that I haven't heard before in movies of this type. The audio was used to good effect here in that it seemed to follow the characters around and creep up on them. I didn't feel that this movie used the sound to manipulate the character's situation and at 87 minutes it didn't really have time for that.

Package

An arty image of Tara Reid with her hair blowing in her face takes up the top portion of this cover. The bottom portion shows a very creepy image of The Sleeper (who looks like he was plucked out of a tribe somewhere). The back cover offers up a shot of Reid, mixed in with an image of The Sleeper. There is a lot of red all over this background cover as well as a description of the movie, a cast list, and system specs.

Final Word

It's sad that Tara Reid isn't taken that seriously anymore because Incubus was quite original. Sure, we've seen this story before but the character of The Sleeper is different. I am not saying he could be the next Jason Vorhees, but he could probably occupy a few rungs below a character like Pinhead. Usually, movies of this nature aren't my cup of tea simply because they telegraph themselves so heavily. While Incubus isn't immune to those kinds of pratfalls, it does retain a certain difference and style and that manages to make it not just another straight to DVD horror tale.

Incubus was released June 6, 2006.