The Incident

Alexandre Courtès's debut (also known as Asylum Blackout) has a grungy lo-fi feel about it, but frustratingly takes a while to get going. We have four bandmates working as chefs at an insane asylum, which is quirky enough, but the viewer is left waiting for the inevitable inciting incident far longer than it's meant to kick in.

The film's opening is not necessarily boring but it lacks momentum, there's simply too much preamble. Ironically enough, once the blood hits the fan the boredom begins to kick in and the pace lags even more as characters go wandering around dour corridors, only livened up with the occasional gruesome death.

Despite the film's short runtime of 85 minutes, it takes over 30 minutes before mayhem erupts at the asylum, or any kind of violence for that matter. That's far too long for this type of genre film. There's no exploration of any theme other than the need to survive, so all the backstory in the first half of the film proves to be moot. The main character, George (played by Rupert Evans) has a girlfriend, who is irrelevant. George has a bit of an uneasy friendship with bandmate Max (Kenny Doughty), again irrelevant. George has his girlfriend (played by Anna Skellern) used against him in arguments with Max, but this argument goes nowhere. The band consists of greasy rockers and they're not developed as anything more than that.

The production utilises great locations for maximum atmosphere. The low budget makes it feel like it's occurring in some unknown netherworld ala Beyond The Black Rainbow, but just like that film this one does not live up to its potential.

The music is decent minimalist stuff, and the director shows skill in making the whole thing watchable, using tropes of the genre in a visually interesting way. But the script by S. Craig Zahler is what needed the most work. It's good that it takes a while to spend with the characters before they're pulled into a nightmare, but unfortunately the characters just aren't interesting. A few more rewrites to hone what the film is about would have made it worthwhile as well. There's a vague attempt at inferring madness is contagious which is not particularly smart or responsible. Currently the Incident is not really about anything, other than a brief and forgettable incident, which has a pretty awful ending.