by Eda Gokcen
Incantation, 2022, Netflix.
If you’re looking for a realistic and truly disturbing horror that’s based on (or at least inspired by) true events, look no further than this low-budget independent feature. Incantation (Kevin Ko, 2022) follows the story of a young mother who violates a satanic Buddhist cult’s taboo and tries to protect her daughter from this curse she unleashes. Released earlier in March this year, it quickly became the highest grossing Tawianese horror film with director Kevin Ko taking on the found footage technique previously used in horror films like The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, 1999) , Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, 2007) and The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002) . As a big fan of said genre, technique and films referenced, I absolutely loved this film and had to write about it.
So if you’re not familiar with this technique it basically means the footage or entire film in the case of Incantation and others, is presented as if it were discovered recordings. This means a lot of hand-held shaky camerawork often done by the actors themselves to add to the natural image and the sought-after realism. Incantation uses a primary home camera owned by the main character Ronan with additional footage from a dash cam to enhance the fright of a car crash by positioning the audience inside the car, as well as security cameras inside a police station for added realism. Italian director Ruggero Deadato is said to have revolutionised the technique by bringing it into the genre of horror with his 1980 cult feature Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980) . However, the revival of this technique is credited to a personal favourite, The Blair Witch Project which is said to have popularised the technique so much so that it became “to the ‘00s and ‘10s what slasher movies were to the ‘80s”. ( Tobias, Scott. "V/H/S". AV Club.)
The Blair Witch Project, 1999, Haxan Films.
The Blair Witch Project was one of the most successful independent films of all time and not just confined to the genre of horror. This iconic film was developed as an idea as the directors Myrick and Sanchez who were film pupils at the time found documentaries about paranormal phenomena much scarier than traditional horror films that lacked the element of reality and the unknown. I agree that if a horror picture is written and directed with too much detail and deliberation it loses the raw, natural and instinctive fear that comes with real life horror. Don’t get me wrong, films like The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1974) , Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) , or Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984) are still incredible must watch horrors and they are spooky indeed, but they (probably) won’t make your blood run cold and give you nightmares. Maybe the average horror film watcher doesn’t actually wish for such side effects but I certainly do. Because if the purpose of art is to evoke feeling, the combination of horror and film is the ultimate form of this due to the presence and manipulation of time and space.
Additionally, the film breaks the fourth wall between the characters and the audience which is a technique more commonly associated with comedy. Throughout the film Ronan has various monologues asking the audience for their help to save her daughter and her desperation, exhaustion and affrightness make this much more eerie than funny. Especially by the end when she speaks the truth about her dishonesty and actual intent. Other than these creepy monologues, there are various shots depicting her family life with her daughter Dodo, with the camera in the corner of a room almost invisible resembling Paranormal Activity. These shots may seem boring to some viewers who just want to see the hyped up “tunnel video” which appears to be the main event of the film when in reality it almost acts as a MacGuffin. To others however, it satisfies a Hitchcockian desire for voyeurism as we get a glimpse into the private family life, seeing their different values, struggles and joyful memories. Now to get a little more complicated, the extensive use of the family theme as a slow build up helps to convey another key theme which I can’t seem to put a name on but can describe it best with quoting the incantation chant itself, “fortune follows misfortune”. The theme of family generally symbolises safety and purity but in this context, it re-establishes this inverse nature of the film with blessings being curses.
Incantation, 2022, Netflix.
One of the main reasons I found this film to be so unique and interesting is that it depicts a satanic Buddhist cult rather than a Christian one as this is definitely overdone within the genre. Upon my viewing, I became very intrigued by the symbolism and imagery used in this detailed fictitious demonology and wanted to find out more about the inspirations for it. The multi-armed Mother-Buddha statue designed and crafted for the film is particularly similar to wrathful forms of the Hindu goddess Kali and there are similarities in the Chinese names of both deities. Additionally, the role of prepubescent girls in the cult echoes various other South-East Asian traditions while also portraying the Chinese family that inspired Incantation. The family of 6 claimed they were possessed by folk religion deities and practised various shocking methods such as throwing urine and faeces at each other in an attempt to expel the demons. They were eventually prosecuted in a case considered one of mass hysteria upon the death of their eldest daughter who they attacked and left to die from her injuries, similar to the mutilated girl in Incantation. Moreover, the mutilation of children and the importance of infants to the Mother-Buddha reflects the influence of Tantric Buddhist imagery.
The tunnel video depicting most of this imagery and the Mother-Buddha statue also has a strong similarity to Verbinski’s The Ring with the idea that if you watch it you will die, although the curse doesn’t quite work in that way here. Overall, this brilliant blend of Western horror influences and techniques with Eastern religions is one of the scariest horrors I’ve seen in a long time. So without spoiling any more of Kevin Ko’s Incantation, I wish you a very spooky movie night.
by Eda Gokcen, August 2022.