Despite its deceptive format, found footage isn’t easy to pull off effectively. Horror fans have become savvy to the tricks and tropes, making it harder to stand out or deliver potent scares. Director Kevin Ko attempts to reinvigorate found footage horror with Incantation, a cult horror meets cursed video tale. A unique approach to found footage techniques can’t fully elevate a familiar supernatural setup or scares, however.
Li Ronan (Tsai Hsuan-yen) works to adopt her biological daughter Dodo (Huang Sin-ting) after an illness forced her to relinquish parental rights years ago. While legally chalked up to mental illness, Ronan’s life turned upside down six years ago when stricken by a curse for trespassing in a forbidden area. Shortly after regaining custody of Dodo, however, that curse comes rearing back, this time targeting the young child with a fury. Ronan goes to great lengths to save her daughter, even if it means confronting the past.
Ko, working from a script co-written with Che-Wei Chang, toggles between past and present. The events of Ronan’s adventures into a remote territory, where a cult-like compound holds mysterious rituals and reveres a strange child, get intercut with her struggles in motherhood. Incantation‘s biggest mystery lies with the inciting event that caused Ronan’s troubles, and it’s one withheld for almost the entire duration. The slow build-up to the reveal is filled with familiar imagery, scare tactics, and tropes seen in more iconic found footage horror. The child speaking to unseen figures hovering on the ceiling? Check. Amateur ghost hunters poking their noses in places explicitly off-limits? Of course.
While the relationship between Ronan and her adorable daughter does provide rooting interest and emotional resonance, Ko struggles to bridge the protagonist’s past to her present. Whether Ronan’s fervent drive to be a mother is rooted in guilt or love seems to be the guiding question. Still, the choice to pursue custody in the wake of such a violent curse, putting Dodo in danger in the first place, never gets addressed in a satisfying way.
It’s Ronan’s obsession with filming that offers up the closest resemblance to answers. She captures everything on camera and uses sentimentality as a default response to questions on her constant camera use. The continuous footage acquisition becomes even more prevalent in the plot, with Ronan breaking the fourth wall innovatively. It immerses the viewer in the horror on a new level. However, Ko can’t figure out how to capture everything through Ronan’s lens, though, and often switches to unexplained and contradictory third-person perspectives that confuse who’s responsible for this found footage.
As with most of its ilk, Netflix’s Incantation saves the best horror moments for its climax. The inciting event gives way to some thrilling, trypophobia-inducing imagery and occasional bloodshed, building toward a creative punchline for an unwavering curse.
Overall, Ko injects Incantation with plenty of pathos and clever techniques to engage, even if it’s still prone to the pitfalls of the format. The constant and abrupt shifts between past and present make for uneven pacing in stretches, and the scares rarely land for those well versed in the subgenre. It doesn’t help that much of the story, outside of Ronan’s maternal instincts and relationship with Dodo, feels like a patchwork of similar films. The horror familiarity and inconsistent logic choices work against a creative approach to the found footage format anchored by solid performances and a memorable conclusion.
Incantation is available on Netflix now.
