The Taiwanese horror film Incantation uses a mockumentary format to explore the story of a woman dealing with the effects of a curse she unleashed years before. The premise from our review:
Ronan (Tsai Hsuan-yen) has finally recovered enough from the events six years before to take custody of her daughter Dodo (Huang Sin-ting), who has been living in a foster home. However, Dodo is soon affected by strange “baddies” and becomes dangerously ill.
Ronan was formerly part of a group of ghostbusters on YouTube who visited the Mother-Buddha worshiping Chen clan and unleashed a curse upon themselves and all who learned of it. Ronan was pregnant at the time, but could not care for the baby after she gave birth because of her fragile mental state, so Dodo was raised in a foster home. Six years later, Ronan reclaims her child, only for their reunion to shatter the peace she has found.
As Dodo becomes sicker, Ronan becomes more determined to save her. She contacts a priest and his wife, and they do a dangerous ritual on the girl, but it backfires when Ronan violates the terms of the ritual and feeds Dodo. Meanwhile, Ming, the owner of the foster home that Dodo grew up in, researches the curse and gets the video from the night six years ago in the tunnel restored. Like the priest and his wife, Ming dies gruesomely in his attempt to help save Dodo.
Ronan takes all of Dodo’s belongings to the foster home and makes a video for her in case she wakes up, instructing her to forget her mother and be happy.
Then, she returns to the tunnel, having covered her body in inscriptions, and completes the rituals, including offering up Dodo’s ear. She asks the audience to join her in saying the blessing before revealing that she lied and it’s actually a curse. (This is the most chilling part of the film, as the audience feels they have been made a part of it.)
The more people who are cursed, the more diluted it becomes, so Ronan hopes that, by tricking the audience to curse themselves, she can save Dodo. She explains that even saying the incantation will cause the curse to come upon someone. Looking upon the face of the Buddha-Mother is the heart of the curse, hence why they keep it covered.
In one final attempt to cure Dodo, Ronan lifts the cover from the face, showing it to the audience and causing her to go into a trance and hit her head until she passes out.
Incantation ends with a clip of a now happy and healthy Dodo, implying that the spreading of the curse worked. She will now be able to lead a normal life because it has diluted enough that she is no longer ill.
Read More:
