INCANTATION (2022)
Incantation is a Taiwanese found footage horror that has former paranormal investigator Li Ronan (Tsai Hsuan-yen) fighting to save her six-year-old daughter Dodo (Huang Sing-ting) from a malevolent entity. During a past investigation, a pregnant Li and her companions (Sean Lin and Wen Ching-Yuan) violated sacred ground and provoked a curse. Now the sinister specter has come for Dodo. Flick is supposedly inspired by actual events.
Directed by Kevin Ko from his script with Chang Che-wei, this is a delightfully bonkers horror in all the right ways. Sure, it’s a bit too long at 111 minutes, but unlike most found footage flicks, this movie gets started with the spooky stuff right away and maintains an atmosphere of dread throughout. There are some very unsettling and disturbing moments, and some very over-the-top and gory moments too. The film knows when to be subtle and spooky, and when to go off the rails and really hit us with some craziness…and it does. Some of it provides unintentional chuckles, when it’s trying to scare, but that is still as entertaining as when the flick is giving us goosebumps. Kevin Ko gives the film a nice creepy atmosphere and uses his locations very well, while utilizing the past investigation footage to show us how Li got into her current supernatural conundrum. Tsai Hsuan-yen makes a solid heroine as the overwhelmed Li Ronan, and little Huang Sing-ting makes for a sweet and sympathetic kid as the malevolent entity’s helpless target, Dodo. Flick is currently streaming on Netflix and definitely worth checking out, even if not being quite as scary as its online reputation would have us believe.
-MonsterZero NJ
MonsterZero NJ's Movie Madhouse 