The Incident is a taut, gory thriller from the pen of S. Craig Zahler (writer of Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Dragged Across Concrete) and directed by music video maestro Alexandre Courtès (The White Stripes' Seven Nation Army). It takes a simple premise - the lunatics have taken over the asylum - focusing on George (Rupert Evans), Max (Kenny Doughty), Ricky (Jospeh Kennedy) and William (Marcus Garvey), a group of cooks caught in the middle of the outbreak. A fight for survival ensues, as the inmates turn violent, killing anyone they encounter.
A little suspension of disbelief is required to get the most of this movie - it's hard to believe that all of the prisoners would immediately go on a killing spree, that there would be so few guards, or that the authorities wouldn't be on the scene within minutes of being alerted - but if you're able to turn a blind eye to such trifling matters, there's a lot of fun to be had with this nightmare situation.
Courtès delivers plenty of nail-biting tension (Ricky trapped in a meat locker) and graphic brutality (Max, in particular, suffers a lot!), while Zahler's script ensures that the main characters behave in a fairly plausible fashion throughout, resorting to violence to defend themselves. The ending of the film seems to have baffled/upset a lot of viewers, who appear to have interpreted it as an M. Night Shyamalan-style twist, whereas I thought it was fairly straight-forward, the sole survivor suffering from nightmares and hallucinations caused by PTSD.
A little suspension of disbelief is required to get the most of this movie - it's hard to believe that all of the prisoners would immediately go on a killing spree, that there would be so few guards, or that the authorities wouldn't be on the scene within minutes of being alerted - but if you're able to turn a blind eye to such trifling matters, there's a lot of fun to be had with this nightmare situation.
Courtès delivers plenty of nail-biting tension (Ricky trapped in a meat locker) and graphic brutality (Max, in particular, suffers a lot!), while Zahler's script ensures that the main characters behave in a fairly plausible fashion throughout, resorting to violence to defend themselves. The ending of the film seems to have baffled/upset a lot of viewers, who appear to have interpreted it as an M. Night Shyamalan-style twist, whereas I thought it was fairly straight-forward, the sole survivor suffering from nightmares and hallucinations caused by PTSD.