Found footage is all about immersion after all!
The Big Picture
- The success of the found footage genre lies in convincing viewers of real terror, not just fiction. Incantation masters this art.
- The Netflix horror movie
Incantation
invites audience participation, blurring the line between fiction and reality and fully immersing the audience in the story. - Small-scale storytelling in
Incantation
creates an intimate horror experience, making viewers potential victims of the curse too.
What’s in a found footage movie? Why do so many horror creators insist on telling their stories in a format that promises the viewer that what they’re watching did indeed happen, even though people are no longer easily deceived by this ruse? Furthermore, what makes us, audience members, so enthralled by such stories? These questions don’t have an easy answer. The real reason behind the success of found footage as a genre has to do with suspension of disbelief, but not of the simple kind that is activated whenever we consume any kind of fiction. There’s an agreement between viewers and creators regarding found footage by which everything we are witnessing is simply not possible, but also entirely real. To truly scare their audiences with a found footage film, directors must convince them that they are part of something terrifying that really happened to someone just like them. And, in recent years, no movie has captured this spirit better than the Netflix horror movie, Kevin Ko‘s Incantation.
Incantation
Six years ago, Li Ronan was cursed after breaking a religious taboo. Now, she must protect her daughter from the consequences of her actions.
- Release Date
- March 18, 2022
- Runtime
- 1 hr 51 min
What Is ‘Incantation’ About?
At first glance, there is nothing particularly special about Incantation. Told in a vlog format, the film follows a young mother, Li Ronan (Hsuan-yen Tsai), trying to get custody of her daughter, Dodo (Sin-ting Huang), as well as save her from a curse that befell her when she was still in the womb. It’s a pretty decent premise, executed competently by a skilled director and a talented cast, among which Tsai certainly stands out. However, it doesn’t sound like anything that defies expectations, does it? And, yet, viewers have had their minds completely blown by this film. It isn’t hard to find posts and videos online of fans who claim to have been terrified and utterly disturbed by what Ko has to offer.
So what is the director’s secret? Well, more than just knowing the correct way to position his camera to create shots that look at the same time professional and amateurish, Ko, alongside fellow screenwriter Che-Wei Chang, has fully grasped what makes the found footage genre tick. Sure, it’s all about telling a good horror story and making it look realistic. After all, isn’t that the basis of most horror films out there? But to make good found footage, one has to go a step further. More than just convincing viewers that the story is true, it is important to bring the spectators into the horror, turning them into agents of their own doom.
‘Incantation’ Begs Its Viewers to Participate in the Action
Right at the start of the movie, Li Ronan asks you, the viewer, to help her rid herself and Dodo of a curse by memorizing a symbol, saying some words in Chinese, and making a hand gesture. The symbol and the wording part can be a bit tricky. It mostly depends on your memory and language skills. However, they do remain on screen for quite some time, and if you’re really dedicated to helping Ronan, you might even rewind a couple of times to get everything right. After all, Ronan seems like a kind woman, and she’s fighting hard to get her daughter out of the orphanage in which she has been living, so don’t you want to help her? Of course, you do!
As for the hand gesture part, well, it actually isn’t that hard. However, it does take a few tries to get it just right. Our instinct, as viewers, is to do exactly as Ronan shows us, not just because we want to bless her, but also because we want to prove ourselves able to make that specific gesture. It’s kind of the same impulse we get when someone asks us if we can roll our tongues or touch our elbows against one another.
‘Late Night with the Devil’ Does Something Completely New With the Found-Footage Genre
This doomed TV extravaganza is unlike any other found-footage experience.
The reason Ronan needs us to do all of these things is that six years prior, when she was pregnant with Dodo, she took a trip with her boyfriend and his brother that ended in disgrace. The goal was to shoot images of a fringe cult for their YouTube channel devoted to creepy things, but they ended up doing a lot more than that. While visiting the worshipers of a fictional malevolent deity called the Mother Buddha, Ronan, Dom (Sean Lin), and Yuan (Ching-yu Wen) went into a tunnel that they were not supposed to enter and laid eyes upon a statue that no one was supposed to see. More than that, they broke offerings and symbols, shot ceremonies that were meant to be held in secrecy, and, to be honest, were just overall terrible guests.
Ronan, Dom, and Yuan’s hubris is immediately met with punishment. Dom is killed inside the tunnel, and Ronan falls victim to a curse that also affects anyone who dares come close to her. As she explains early on in the film, she can’t even tell people about the curse properly, as the more you know about the Mother Buddha, the more damned you are. Terrified, Ronan gives her newborn daughter away for adoption, but as her life begins to stabilize, she feels that she might have what it takes to look after little Dodo. The problem is that, as Dodo becomes entangled in her mother’s life, she begins to be tormented by an evil entity. Inexplicable noises are heard around her and Ronan’s small apartment, and little by little the girl’s body is covered in bruises and other marks that simply have no plausible origin. At first, it looks like she’s sick, but Ronan knows that her ailment is not physical, but spiritual.
‘Incantation’s Small Scale Works in Favor of the Horror
And so we follow Ronan as she tries – and, more often than not, fails – to find a cure for Dodo’s suffering. Eventually, she comes across a group of monks who teach her the symbol and the incantation that she asks the viewers to repeat in the movie’s first scene. It’s a small-scale story, one that focuses only on the drama of a mother and child, and ultimately that works in favor of the film’s horror. It’s not just the intimacy that makes Incantation work, the sense that we are part of Ronan and Dodo’s lives and are, thus, closer to them than we are to the characters in a horror movie with larger stakes. It is also the fact that we are not expected to accept a whole universe different from our own, just the story of someone who stumbled upon a corner of the world that should’ve remained in the dark.
To better explain what we mean, let’s consider some other popular found footage films, such as 2007’s REC and 2023’s Late Night with the Devil. Both movies ask us to imagine large-scale events that we know have not taken place in our reality, such as a zombie outbreak and a major television show hosting the devil on its stage. While we accept those things as part of the in-movie universe, we know for certain that they have not taken place in our world. Now, our minds work differently when we look at a story as private as Ronan and Dodo’s. Who’s to say something like that has never happened to anyone?
Thus, the small scale of Incantation lends a certain level of credence to the events of the film. Sure, there are scenes in which we are reminded by a too-loud soundtrack or by some illogical course of action by Ronan that what we’re watching is not real — Incantation is by no means a perfect film. However, by focusing on an intimate story, Ko invests the audience in a web that feels real, even though it has its fair share of fragile threads.
‘Incantation’ Downright Curses Its Viewers
By the end of the film, Ronan finally confesses that the blessing she has been asking the viewers to participate in isn’t a blessing at all. The sign, the symbol, the hand gesture — they are all part of a curse. Her goal is to curse as many people as possible so that she can dilute her and Dodo’s suffering. That, she says, is the only way to deal with the Mother Buddha’s hex. So, by the time that Incantation ends, you realize that you have spent the past two hours or so effectively damning your own life.
This is a truly disturbing turn of events. It’s an effective tool akin to showing us Samara’s (Daveigh Chase) video in The Ring. Instantly, we are no longer just watching something awful happen to someone else, we are also potential victims of this curse. This is what makes Incantation so terrifying: the promise that you will be next. After all, even if you have managed to resist the urge to do that accursed hand gesture, you have seen the symbol and heard the words. You have gazed upon the Mother Buddha, and, therefore, your fate is now in her hands.
The goal of any good found footage movie is to make its viewers a part of the universe in which the story takes place. We are turned into peeping toms, relishing the suffering of others, or even into accomplices of bloodthirsty killers that have left us piles of snuff content. But it isn’t that often that a movie dares turn its viewers into de facto victims. So, yeah, by all means, watch Incantation. It is truly an amazing ride from start to finish. Just do it at your own risk.
Incantation is available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.
This article was originally published on collider.com