Incantation
Inspired by a true story of a family who believed they were possessed by spirits, this film follows a woman who must protect her child from a curse. WARNING: This is a cursed video, it might contain certain risks to watch. For those who dares to follow, please solve the puzzle of my daughter's curse with me.
- Released:
- Runtime: 120 minutes
- Genre: Horror
- Stars: Hsuan-yen Tsai, Kao Ying-Hsuan, Sin-Ting Huang, Sean Lin, Wen Ching-Yu, Queenie Chen, Yi Peng
- Director: Kevin Ko
Comments
- gokhann - 15 January 2024
Disturbing and relatively original for found footage
I want to note that I'm an avid horror genre fan who literally watches at least one horror movie a night. I'm stingy with my ratings and this is one of the better ones out of the 60+ horror movies I watched in the past 2 months.
It's a disturbing kind of horror that this movie provides. The story could flow a bit better but overall it does a good enough of job of making you want to keep watching. I sort of saw the ending coming as the scenes breaking of fourth wall left me questioning motives. You'll know what I mean when you watch the movie.
Overall, if you are a horror fan you will most likely enjoy this. - saniasurat - 23 June 2023
Enthralling and Gripping
This Taiwanese movie is not just a thriller created to send chills down our spines but produced to induce an amplified experience of enigma and awe. The plot of the movie is fundamentally based on a dreadful ritual being practiced by a rural community in Taiwan, where they ironically idolize a satanist deity as a medium of redemption for their sins. To properly introduce this movie to the audience, I'd have to begin by appreciating the cinematographer and the scriptwriter for their prodigious execution of the vision of the concept. The placement of the camera angles and the viewpoint portrayed were both the most striking and remarkable aspects of the film. I would be doing great injustice to the storyline of the film by not eulogizing the character of the protagonist, Li Ronan. She was the most influential medium for conveying the essence of the story. The actress, Hsuan-yen Tsai, did a prodigious job at gripping the audience to the storyline -by the throat- quite literally and remarkably executed her perplexing yet beguiling character.
The most striking element, personally, was the surreal setting of the narrative. The fundamental basis of the story, that is, the solemnization of the religious ritual that perpetuated the grim course of events, was indeed mind-bending and out of the ordinary. Another extremely noticeable aspect of the film was its fantastic direction. Kevin Ko, the director, left absolutely no space for criticism in his fashion of directing. Both pace and the rhythm of the story were smooth and plain sailing, especially the interweaving of the audio effects with the flow of the story.
Thriller-suspense and horror genres of films particularly, are challenged with the task of consolidating the audio-visual aspects that should satisfy the audience in the most adrenaline-inducing way possible and keep them on tenterhooks. Most of the films falling under this genre fail to recognize the catch and end up producing the most unflattering narrative combined with mediocre and uncoordinated audio-visual effects. Surprisingly, this film seems to have maintained the enthralling aspects of the genre without entirely decanting the relevance of the narrative and its relevance in reality. There are peculiarly certain scenes in this film that are bound to leave an impression on the minds of the audience, because of their excellent execution and uncanny character. The color palette adopted is another element that enhances the total experience of a thrill-enjoyer. This film is bound to stimulate our curiosities pertaining to the other -worldly elements and spheres of life.
I would like to conclude my review of this film on a personal note. I especially relished watching this thriller and appreciating its production. This film particularly coerced me to question my beliefs and existing notions about the world and human life. I would recommend this to those who often fancy indulging themselves in the unknown spheres of life, more like its darker aspects, and especially crave artistic stimulation. The metaphorical angle and the juxtaposition of two polar opposite sentiments of terror and bravery in the face of fear is something the audience will look forward to and will revel in. - avindugunasinghe - 24 December 2022
Spooky
While Incantation is a thoroughly entertaining movie, producers seemed to have toned down a bit to avoid any mental breakdowns. Incantation is noteworthy for it's compelling nature. Story sticks to it's theme throughout the entirety with convincing logic. Chilling visuals ,gloomy colour tone and sound effects were in perfect harmony. Considering the nature of Li Ronan's family life the curse may indicate the tragic story of a mother who is put to survive through the impossible. Her loneliness and helplessness is enacted well by Tsai with shaky and startled expressions. Incantation all in all is a well crafted horror story. - erikaf-33339 - 29 September 2022
Probably very controversial movie
I personally didn't liked it at all. The tension is there, you can't feel the atmosphere. However for me it was really boring, didn't like the story line. It's unique because of the camera documentary style, like you just watched the found footage. There were jump scares, creepiness but it was not scary to me at all. It would still be fine, I can't really get scared from horror movies, but it wasn't a good story in my opinion. It started good, and it was really promising, but I think it had so much more potential. I was waiting for something to happen the whole time, but it was just really boring. - GiraffeDoor - 30 August 2022
A very mixed experience.
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.
