Incantation

Ronan (Tsai Hsuan-yen) had spent time recovering in a mental institution and was now ready to be reunited with her daughter Dodo (Huang Sin-ting), who had been raised in a foster house run by Ming (Kao Ying-hsuan). However, when Dodo was with Ronan, she began to act bizarrely and "see" invisible entities called "baddies".

Ronan realized that these paranormal phenomena were related to events six years ago. She tagged along with her boyfriend Dom (Sean Lin) and his cousin Yuan (RQ) when the two returned to their village for some mystic family rituals. They began filming the proceedings for their YouTube channel, thus violating religious taboos.

Director Kevin Ko used the "found footage" style (mainly home videos and security cameras) to tell his unsettling story, going back and forth in time. The involvement of a cute child in mortal danger makes things more stressful. Ronan breaking the fourth wall to involve her audience to join her to chant "Hou-ho-xiu-yi, si-sei-wu-ma" added more creeps. The cursed video taken within cursed tomb made for a grand finale.

Incantation had the potential to be great, and the earmarks of a great horror movie were present in the first five minutes: a creepy score, unsettling imagery, and the unique application of optical illusions, as well as legitimate audience participation. Sadly, the film wasn't quite able to capitalize.

Incantation's major downfalls can be found in its overuse of what can only be referred to as horror cliches. These include but are not limited to telegraphed jump scares, nonsensical character decisions for the sake of advancing the plot, and excessive "found footage" that heavily strains believability. When done well, a found footage film can be one of the most immersive horror experiences, but when characters consistently film themselves in ways that make no sense and actually become detrimental, the film tends to break the suspension of disbelief. Incantation is a particularly bad offender in this category, and frequently has protagonists waste valuable time reaching for the camera or aiming it to get a good shot rather than do literally anything more logical.

Upsides? The concept is fascinating, and the aforementioned mechanic of audience participation is implemented in a clever way. There are some genuinely haunting visuals that are absolutely not for the faint of heart, and the sound design and score of the film do a fine job of creating a creepy atmosphere when they aren't screaming at the audience to prepare for a jumpscare.

Overall, Incantation is a technically competent found footage film that fails to rise above mediocre in most aspects, but it's good enough for a single watch.

A movie that wanted all the credibility of found footage but didn't want to really put in the work. I know that found footage means you can sort of just wing it with the camera work and not really bother with the music but this would have worked better in a normal format.

It feels very deliberate how EVERYTHING gets filmed and the documentary approach (interviews with characters) doesn't help anything, the #horror scenes are cheesy and unfortunately they do include non-diegetic music.

There are positives though: although not a great example of horror that sears off the screen, there's a more than adequate story of a person trying to rebuilt their life under the ugly, watchful eye of those who would take someone's child away against the latter's will. They play it for a lot of pathos and go quite too for with it to be frank. It's not that I don't feel for these characters and their plight. It's that the whole thing feels like the author is exploiting their misery in lieu of better horroring.

The flashback element, where they are staying with that traditional family...I think maybe that should have been the whole movie. It creeped me out big time to see them painting that poor little girl.

There are other memorable moments that occur as the thing goes on and which I won't spoil. They admirably use a quite feather touch approach as we the audience just helplessly watch something that just might end up bad.

The final act carries a special sense of dread as we hang in the balance and it's fairly effective.

Those optical illusions add nothing.

As a fan of found footage films I have seen them all and I know the difference between a good one and bad one. And this is a good one. First off the lone problem. It's too long at an hour fifty. But Asian horror is often long running and that's that. This is short by those standards.

Otherwise we get a good story, superb acting (so much so that you forget you're reading subtitles) almost constant creepy scares from the start and in general just a damn good found footage environment. Also the emotionally charged story really keeps you rooting for the protagonist the whole way as it centers around a parent's love for her child and what she will face to protect her.

Just a damn good film with plenty of scares, gore and more. Give it a watch.

If you like horror movies, you might have watched stuff at the end of which you were either 1. Glad it was over 2. Or, glad you watched it because it was fun 3. Or, both but now didn't want to dream about the movie

This film did something that I haven't come across before. Towards the end of the movie, it'll leave you feeling like you are and will continue to be a part of the movie. Get it? I was like "That was a good movie, I'm glad I watched it, but WHY did I watch it?" It's tough to explain this feeling without spoiling it so I'll leave it there.

Incantation is a story about a mother's drive to protect her daughter from a curse, no matter what/who comes in her way.

The movie is shot in found-footage (FF, cinematic technique in which all or a substantial part of the work is presented as if it were discovered film or video recordings); showing a movie in the form of a recording is fine, but the purpose of the recording and the audience's involvement with the recording is what IMO makes or breaks the FF sub-genre and I have to say, they've made really GOOD use of this technique, just by better writing. I so wish I could tell more.

Horror movies that make you feel uneasy/creeped out are so much better than the ones that heavily rely on cheap jump scares. I counted a grand total of ONE jump scare in this movie, so that is a major plus in my books. There's this continued sense of eeriness and the creeps (goosebumps galore) throughout the movie, all well conveyed by the audio-visuals and just plain silence. The acting by everybody involved was good, including the kid.

The movie does have flaws IMO, a couple dumb moments here and there, but you can't expect to make everyone happy as a moviemaker. If I look past that, it's a regular horror movie with a certain twist that makes it a GOOD horror movie, the best of the year so far...?

If you like horror movies, check this out. Watch it especially if you're a fan of the FF sub-genre, they've done something that you may not have seen before.