Incantation (2022) Review: A Curse That Wants You In

Is Incantation worth watching?

Mostly yes. Incantation is one of the more genuinely disturbing found-footage horror films of recent years, thanks to a clever device that pulls the audience into the curse itself. Kevin Ko roots the scares in the specifics of Taiwanese folk religion, and the best sequences are frightening in a way that lingers after the credits. The reservations are familiar ones for the genre: shaky-camera fatigue, characters who keep filming long after they should run, and a middle section that sags before the final act.

What is Incantation about?

Incantation is presented as footage assembled by Li Ronan (Hsuan-yen Tsai), a young mother who speaks directly to the camera at the start. She asks the viewer for help: to remember a symbol and repeat a short chant, which she says will ease the burden on her daughter. Why she needs that help is what the film sets out to show.

Years earlier, Ronan and two friends who ran a video channel about the paranormal travelled to a remote village to film a secretive family’s religious rites, and broke a taboo they did not understand. Now she has regained custody of her young daughter, Dodo, after a long separation, and strange, escalating events begin to surround the child. Kevin Ko directs this Taiwanese production in Mandarin, and it runs 110 minutes. It became a major hit at home and found a wide international audience through streaming.

Horror that implicates the viewer

The film’s master stroke is its framing. By making the audience a participant, with Ronan addressing the camera as if speaking to someone who can help, Ko turns passive viewing into something uneasy. Each time the chant or the symbol returns, the film tightens the knot, and it plays cleverly on the viewer’s uncertainty about what exactly they are being asked to take part in. It is the kind of conceit that could feel gimmicky, but Ko commits to it with real conviction.

The folk-religious elements are the other key strength. The rituals, shrines, taboos and deity at the heart of the story are staged with a specificity that makes them feel old and serious, not borrowed from Western horror. The flashback footage from the village, dark, cramped and increasingly frantic, contains the film’s most frightening sequences.

A committed central performance

Hsuan-yen Tsai does most of the heavy lifting as Ronan, a mother whose love for her daughter is mixed with guilt, desperation and fear. She plays the role with raw sincerity, and the tension between her protectiveness and her instability keeps the domestic scenes compelling even when the scares pause. The child performance is also convincing, and the film’s portrayal of a fraught mother-daughter bond gives it an emotional core many found-footage films lack.

Where the form gets in the way

Found footage has built-in limits, and Incantation does not escape them. The camera keeps rolling in moments where no one would plausibly film, some scenes rely on glitches and jump scares that feel generic, and the jumble of timelines and footage sources can be confusing. The middle of the film loses momentum, with a run of domestic hauntings that repeat familiar genre beats before the story regains its grip. At 110 minutes, it is longer than the format comfortably sustains.

Who should watch Incantation?

It is well suited to fans of found-footage and religious horror, viewers who enjoyed Asian folk-horror hits, and anyone looking for a scary film with a distinct cultural texture. Those who dislike handheld camerawork may struggle. Content includes disturbing imagery, peril involving a child and some gore, and the film is best watched at night with full attention rather than on a phone.

If it gets under your skin, try these:

• The Medium, a Thai mockumentary about possession and inherited spirits, with a similarly punishing escalation.
• Sewu Dino, an Indonesian curse story built around black magic and ritual.
• Marry My Dead Body, a very different Taiwanese hit that shows the lighter, comic side of the island’s ghost stories.

The verdict

Incantation is uneven and at times frustrating, but its interactive framing and grounding in folk religion make it one of the more memorable found-footage films of its era. When it works, it is properly frightening, and its central idea will stay with you long after you have tried to forget the chant.

Rating: 3.5/5