Incantation

As a fan of found footage films I have seen them all and I know the difference between a good one and bad one. And this is a good one. First off the lone problem. It's too long at an hour fifty. But Asian horror is often long running and that's that. This is short by those standards.

Otherwise we get a good story, superb acting (so much so that you forget you're reading subtitles) almost constant creepy scares from the start and in general just a damn good found footage environment. Also the emotionally charged story really keeps you rooting for the protagonist the whole way as it centers around a parent's love for her child and what she will face to protect her.

Just a damn good film with plenty of scares, gore and more. Give it a watch.

Overall I feel like if they shaved about 20-30 minutes off the movie and kept the direction a bit more clear It could have been really great. Minorly confusing at times how a character got somewhere or how much time passed, it also jumped back and fourth from past and present, it was fine and we figured out pretty quickly what was years in the past, but that mixed with the hazy time passing between present scenes it was a bit confusing still.

Some of my friends know me for being that guy who does not get scared at horror movies. So because of that some of them came up to me saying how this was "the scariest movie that they've ever seen" and "oh this one is definitely gonna scare you". And tbh i see why. The movie make many attempts to build tension, i mean like many. And for the most part i can see how it would get people to feel unsettled or uncomfortable with what's going on in the movie.

I liked the movie a lot if you couldn't tell from the high ratings. I did catch my self a couple times getting like really into it but honestly it was nothing i haven't seen before. The movie was still fun with big climaxes and tones of scares that even got me to jump. Really enjoyed it. One thing i will say is so not watch it in dubbed. It sounds terrible, just suck it up and read some subtitles. Trust me it makes the movie 100% times better.

Ronan (Tsai Hsuan-yen) had spent time recovering in a mental institution and was now ready to be reunited with her daughter Dodo (Huang Sin-ting), who had been raised in a foster house run by Ming (Kao Ying-hsuan). However, when Dodo was with Ronan, she began to act bizarrely and "see" invisible entities called "baddies".

Ronan realized that these paranormal phenomena were related to events six years ago. She tagged along with her boyfriend Dom (Sean Lin) and his cousin Yuan (RQ) when the two returned to their village for some mystic family rituals. They began filming the proceedings for their YouTube channel, thus violating religious taboos.

Director Kevin Ko used the "found footage" style (mainly home videos and security cameras) to tell his unsettling story, going back and forth in time. The involvement of a cute child in mortal danger makes things more stressful. Ronan breaking the fourth wall to involve her audience to join her to chant "Hou-ho-xiu-yi, si-sei-wu-ma" added more creeps. The cursed video taken within cursed tomb made for a grand finale.

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.