Incantation (film)

Incantation is a 2022 Taiwanese found footage supernatural folk horror film directed by Kevin Ko, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Chang Che-wei. The film was released in Taiwan on March 18, 2022, and it became the highest-grossing Taiwanese horror film. It received an international distribution from Netflix on July 8th, 2022.

Plot
A woman named Li Ronan implores the viewer to memorize an insignia and chant an incantation to send blessings and lift the curse on her six-year-old daughter, Dodo. The insignia and incantation are interspersed frequently throughout the film to encourage the viewer to pray along. The events are shown as found footage in a non-linear manner. The written plot is in chronological order.

Six years earlier, a newly-pregnant Ronan, her boyfriend Dom, and Dom's cousin Yuan break a serious religious taboo while documenting a ritual for their online video channel. They visit Dom and Yuan's relatives in a remote clan mountain village, where the villagers practice an esoteric Yunnan religion, worshipping an ancestral deity called Mother Buddha. They spy on the clan preparing a child for sacrifice. The unconscious child, whose body is covered in runes, is left in front of a tunnel that the clan has expressly forbidden the trio from entering. Dom and Yuan enter the tunnel; Yuan shortly emerges, screaming, while Dom's dead body is carried out by the villagers. The footage from within the tunnel shot by Dom and Yuan has since become damaged. After Dodo is born, Ronan leaves her at a foster care home and seeks psychiatric help.

In the present, Ronan has recovered and is taking Dodo to live with her, feeling ready. However, Dodo is disturbed by a malicious presence and develops a debilitating illness. When social workers arrive to take Dodo away, feeling that Ronan is unsuitable, the mother and daughter escape with the help of Ming, the sympathetic manager of the foster home. They bring Dodo to a shrine, where a priest and his wife forbid her from eating for the next seven days, but when runes appear all over her body, Ronan feeds her in desperation. The priest and his wife are violently killed and Dodo deteriorates.

Ming goes to Yunnan to conduct more research into the esoteric religion and has the damaged tunnel footage professionally restored. After watching the restored footage, he becomes possessed and kills himself. In the footage, it is shown that Dom and Yuan passed disturbing items laid ritualistically throughout the tunnel, which led to the altar of Mother Buddha. When removing the veil from Mother Buddha's face, Dom becomes possessed and dies. Yuan makes it out but is violently killed by unseen forces. The villagers burned Dom's body, and their bodies were also covered in runes.

Ronan confesses that she has been lying to the viewer all along. The priest Ming visited in Yunnan revealed that Mother Buddha is in fact a malevolent entity; if one submits one's name with the incantation, it means one agrees to carry her curse. Instead of conveying blessings, the incantation actually serves to dilute the curse; when more people chant it, the curse spreads out and the burden on those bearing it becomes lighter, with fewer misfortunes befalling them. Mother Buddha's face has to be covered because it is the source of the curse. Ronan returns Dodo to the foster home and travels back to the tunnel in the now-abandoned village. At the altar, she reveals Mother Buddha's face on camera, intending to curse the viewers to save her daughter. She then gets possessed and kills herself. The film ends with a happy and healthy Dodo, implying that the burden of her curse has been shared with everyone who watched the film, lightening its effects.

Cast

 * Tsai Hsuan-yen as Li Ronan
 * Huang Sin-ting as Dodo
 * Kao Ying-hsuan as Ming
 * Sean Lin as Dom
 * RQ (Wen Ching-yu) as Yuan

Background
The movie is inspired by an incident in Gushan District, Kaohsiung in 2005. A family of six had claimed that they were possessed by various Chinese folk religion deities and accused each other of being possessed by demons masquerading as deities. They burned each other with incense, hit each other with sticks and spirit tablets, and splashed feces and urine on each other in an attempt to expel the demons. In the end, they singled out the eldest daughter and attacked her until she died of her injuries. The five remaining members of her family were subsequently charged with the offense of "abandoning a helpless person resulting in the person's death". The case was considered one of mass hysteria.

Design
Kevin Ko explained that the Mother Buddha, hand gestures, chant, symbols, and everything associated with the religion in the film are all fictitious. Much of the budget was spent on the design and production of the props, especially the large statue of the Mother Buddha.

The image of the Mother Buddha incorporated elements from Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism.

Release
Incantation was showcased at the Network of Asian Fantastic Films (NAFF) project market during the 2019 Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival before entering production and going on to become the highest-grossing Taiwanese horror film. The film was released in Taiwan on March 18, 2022, and also screened at the Far East Film Festival. In June 2022, Netflix announced that it would distribute the film worldwide on July 8, 2022.

Box office
As of June 2022, Incantation has grossed 170 million TWD (US$5.7 million), making it the highest-grossing 2022 film in Taiwan. It became the highest-grossing Taiwanese horror film of all time.

Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 75% based on 12 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10.