Boy likes girl. Girl accidentally exposes her breast to him. Boy thinks that gives him a chance with her.
Not quite your classic love story, but the incoming high school freshman Benj is confident that the wardrobe malfunction is a sign that things are about to get serious with the sophomore girl Bailey Benj has been pining after.
But Benj is also aware that high school is a different kind of beast, and he’ll need to make a name for himself if he wants to impress Bailey and cement his high school social status for the next four years. Fortunately, Benj’s friend and fellow incoming freshman, Danah, is hosting a “massive rager” since his parents are out of town for the weekend.
Alright, so it’s actually Danah’s older brother whois hosting the party. But Danah says he, Benj, and their two other friends, Eddie and Connor, are allowed to come. And Benj thinks attending a party for upperclassmen as freshmen will certainly give him the social cred he needs.
“We’re the only freshmen invited,” Benj says, eyes shining. “That type of publicity could carry us through the rest of the year—maybe even through high school. And who you are in high school is basically who you’ll be forever.”
But who does Benj want to be? Well, that’s for this party to determine.
Two boys take care of an intoxicated girl when she’s thrust into the backseat of their car. Worried someone might take advantage of her, they try to get her home, eventually providing a room for her to stay in at one of their homes. Though embarrassed, the girl later thanks them for looking out for her.
When confronted, a girl calls another girl out for being a jerk and causes her to reflect on her cruel personality. A boy apologizes for pretending to be someone he isn’t in order to gain social status.
A boy says that his use of security cameras makes him “like God.”
While speaking with Benj, Bailey’s breast falls out of her shirt (it is important to note that while the actress herself is 21, she’s portraying a minor—and, even more problematically, the actor playing Benj is a minor, even though it’s likely he was subbed out for the scene). When Benj tells his friends about it, he rates how attractive her nipple was.
A male and female student run through the party naked, and we briefly see both of them, fully exposed, from the front. Benj likewise stumbles across two gay high schoolers engaged in sex. Male and female students are seen in their underwear. Other students, heterosexual and homosexual, passionately kiss. A TikTok video’s background is a woman in shorts shaking her rear.
Benj practices kissing in his bedroom mirror. An adult asks his girlfriend’s son if he can borrow a condom. He also frequently references having sex with her to the boy.
Benj’s sister is a lesbian, and she spends most of the film attempting to figure out why her girlfriend broke up with her. We hear a reference to LGBT sex.
We also hear references to ejaculation, arousal, oral sex, pubic hair and more. Someone describes how great a party will be by the ratio of female genitalia to male genitalia. Someone dances with a sex doll.
A man accidentally sets himself on fire and suffers some burns. A boy accidentally punches a girl in the face, breaking her nose. Another boy slips and shatters his collarbone. Various boys get punched or kicked in the crotch. One sorry sap takes a cattle prod zap to the crotch, and the prod falls into the nearby pool, shocking a man. A fistfight breaks out between boys, leaving knuckles bloodied. Someone gets temporarily knocked out from a punch, and he’s kicked while on the ground, his mouth bleeding. Someone gets hit in the head with a beer bottle.
A school senior nearly runs over a few students.
Danah attempts to manipulate a girl into sleeping with him, lying and using persuasive tactics to deceive her into a sexual situation. He spies out his female target using security cameras, commenting on their bodies. A boy says he’ll commit suicide if he doesn’t get with a girl. Two boys worry that, if they leave a vulnerable girl, a “psycho rapist” might get her.
The f-word is used around 120 times, including six instances preceded by “mother.” The s-word is used over 70 times. We likewise hear a whole lot of other crude words, like “a–,” “b–tard,” “b–ch,” “d–k,” “p—y,” “d–chebag” and “p-ss.” Someone derogatorily calls his friends a specific female body part. God’s name is used in vain 25 times, including once in the form of “g-dd–n.” Jesus’ name is likewise used in vain eight times.
A boy is compelled to snort a line of ketamine, with predictable consequences. A boy inhales presumably nitrous oxide out of a balloon to get high while driving. Another boy sells Vitamin D pills, claiming that it’s ecstasy. The boys lament the fentanyl epidemic as they purchase the pills. Students smoke marijuana and do bong hits.
A teacher supplies underaged students with shots of alcohol and does a bong hit with them. Various underaged people drink alcohol, and many of them get intoxicated. A couple students get so drunk that they forcefully vomit or defecate. A reluctant freshman is told that he’ll need to get intoxicated to cement his reputation in school.
Students smoke cigarettes. There’s a reference to drug addiction.
An intoxicated girl involuntarily defecates, and we see the fecal matter smeared on her dress and car seat. When two boys attempt to help her, one boy gets the stuff in his mouth and on his hand, and the girl’s face lands in her excrement. Three girls visibly urinate.
It’s revealed that a girl got surgery on her nose in order to win the validation of another girl, since she felt her physical appearance was to blame for their breakup.
Police ignore a crime. People litter. A teacher, seeking the affirmation of his students, encourages them to drink and get high. Someone describes beauty as a “mostly male construct.”
In some ways, movies like Incoming are some of the easiest films we can review.
It’s one thing for us to review a movie or TV show that’s not that bad, content-wise. Maybe it’s even good—until a surprise content issue hidden deep within the film catches us off guard and forces a painful qualification to an otherwise nice review. It’s another thing entirely when a movie so brazenly displays its content with a smug look.
Incoming, settling itself so snugly in the latter, is then paradoxically a hard movie to watch but an easy review to write, since there’s no need for nuance. To put it simply, this modern-day raunchy teen comedy is as gross as its far-too-long defecation joke which truly puts the “gag” in gag.
The content issues go much farther than merely gross, though. From a teacher who gets intoxicated with his students to a boy who tries to manipulate a girl into sleeping with him, Incoming contains some pretty creepy plot threads played for laughs.
But like we said, those issues and far more are what makes this an easy review for us. Because while Incoming may be, well, incoming, we have no hesitations about heading on out.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
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