YOUTUBE.COM PIctured in this still from Youtube is Aaron Eckhart, who plays Dr. Seth Ember in “Incarnate.”

“Incarnate,” the latest from low-budget horror producer Jason Blum, is a stale and wholly unoriginal rehash of every trope Blumhouse Productions has previously conquered. It follows that newly tired “Insidious” trend where we confront our monsters/demons in an alternate dream-like state, but it entirely wastes the potential of moody and nightmarish landscapes and instead, fabricates memory based scenarios that lack any inspired scares.

Aaron Eckhart plays Dr. Seth Ember, a scruffly, wheelchair bound scientist devoted to capturing the demon that murdered his entire family in a devastating car accident — Maggie. Unlike most demonic possesion movies, “Incarnate” foregoes the traditional exorcism methods — even denounces them, as well as the term “demon” — and chooses to integrate some pseudo-scientific nonsense about how we can monitor your soul via a frequency unique to each person like WiFi. It’s a techy-horror concept that’s so thinly covered and explained that its sole function seems to be snapping any sense of atmospheric dread.

We’re introduced to this in the opening scene of the film, where we first meet Dr. Seth Ember, who’s cleaned up and miraculously using his legs. He’s in someone’s subconscious. He approaches a middle-aged man sitting in a corner booth enjoying himself with several woman. Ember explains that what he’s experiences is not real, that it’s a dream. He tells him to check the time, which doesn’t tick, and finally to look out the window. When he finally does, he discovers that his eyes are blacked out and that everyone elses are now too.  In “Incarnate” the demons base your reality off of what you want most, while they feed off your soul. The elaborate reality constructed for him by the demons possessing him — or parasitic entities as Ember likes to call them — has been destroyed and Ember can now “evict” the demon, which apparently doesn’t take much.

Meanwhile in reality, we see Dr. Ember hooked up to the IVs and other devices being monitored by his team, which consists of a couple stereotypical nerdy goth characters straight out of late 90s, early 00s horror films. We learn that time doesn’t move on the inside, but that if his body is slowed down for as long as 8 minutes he will be trapped forever.

It’s a thoughtlessly uninspired setup that continues the trend over the films 91 minute runtime. Director Brad Peyton (“San Andreas”) refuses to inject even the slightest stylistic flourish to give his film some pop. It’s like he’s not even trying.

We learn it wasn’t Maggie after all in that nightclub and that Ember’s physical state has been seriously deteriorating due to his convictions, which has no follow up in the entire film.

The Vatican contacts Ember after failing to exercise a demon from a boy that they believe is Maggie, but Ember isn’t so sure, and he’s not as interested in helping people as he is in enacting revenge. When he visits the boy’s subconscious he finally discovers the truth.

“Incarnate” doesn’t alter its storytelling — which you’re two scenes ahead of at all times — until its last act, where it temporarily makes the most out of its subconscious stealing narrative with a half-clever mindbending twist and some decent thrills. But it’s way too little, too late.