The Incident

Directed by Isaac Ezban (2014) **1/2

How many Mexican science fiction feature films have you seen? Writer and director Isaac Ezban has made three (The Incident, The Similars, 2015, and Parallel, 2018), with a fourth on the way. The Incident was his first feature film, made with only $100,000 and shot in 24 days.

The Incident (Spanish: El Incidente) plays like an extended Twilight Zone episode by way of Lost (in fact, Ezban has said that Lost is the film’s biggest influence, offering clues and nods to the series throughout the film). The premise is simple but intriguing: two sets of people get stuck in a time loop and space from which they can’t escape.

After some unsettling imagery, The Incident begins like a noir drama, as cop Marco (Raúl Méndez) comes to arrest brothers-in-crime Oliver (Fernando Alvarez Rebeil) and Carlos (Humberto Busto) in their apartment. Pursuing the couple into the apartment stairway, Marco (inadvertently) shoots Carlos in the leg. They then all hear a loud boom from outside the building. They are thereafter unable to leave the stairwell; doors won’t open, cries for help go unanswered and the vending machine mysteriously gets refilled every 24 hours. Carlos eventually dies of his wound. Philip K. Dick’s novel Time Out of Joint (1959) notably takes a part in the story.

In a parallel story also jarred by a loud, unexplained boom, a family situation tenuous to begin with is about to get a lot worse. Sandra (Nailea Norvind) and her children Camila (Paulina Montemayor) and Daniel (Gabriel Santoyo) are about to take a road trip to see her ex-husband; driving is her new one, Roberto (Hernán Mendoza) a bit of a dunce inattentive to the children’s needs. When Camilla has an asthma attack due to fruit juice Roberto allowed her to drink (after which he steps on and breaks her inhaler), they attempt to drive back home, only to find themselves in an endless road loop, always returning to the place they started.

Both stories then jump many decades into the future, where the characters, still alive, have aged at different rates. It would be a disservice to Ezban’s storytelling and pacing to describe what future worlds he delineates. I will say he gives a late-moment explanation for the parallel worlds, an expository data dump that may seem to some viewers too much information. It’s to Ezban’s credit, though, that even with his scenarios partly explained, there’s still much mystery to ponder.

The level of the acting and production values, even on a low budget, are high. Though few of its characters are truly sympathetic, the concept of the film will keep your interest. The Incident is also filled with visual homages and Easter eggs, from Daniel’s M.C. Escher print on the wall to the gas station attendant suit embroidered with the name of Hugo (a tip of the hat, one imagines, to Hugo Gernsback, considered one of the three Fathers of Science Fiction).

—Michael R. Neno, 2019 October 23