Incantation () is a 2022 Taiwanese found-footage supernatural folk horror film directed by Kevin Ko, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Chang Che-wei. The film was released in Taiwan on 18 March 2022, and it became the highest-grossing Taiwanese horror film. It received an international distribution from Netflix on 8 July 2022.
A woman named Li Ronan implores the viewer to memorize an insignia and chant an incantation to send blessings and lift the curse on her six-year-old daughter, Dodo. The insignia and incantation are interspersed frequently throughout the film to encourage the viewer to pray along. The events are shown as found footage in a non-linear manner. The written plot is in chronological order.
Six years earlier, a newly pregnant Ronan, her boyfriend Dom, and Dom's cousin Yuan broke a serious religious taboo while documenting a ritual for their online video channel. They visit Dom and Yuan's relatives in a remote clan mountain village, where the villagers practice an esoteric Yunnan religion, worshiping an ancestral deity called Mother-Buddha. They spy on the clan preparing a child for sacrifice. The unconscious child, whose body is covered in runes, is left in front of a tunnel that the clan has expressly forbidden the trio from entering. Dom and Yuan enter the tunnel; Yuan shortly emerges, screaming, while Dom's dead body is carried out by the villagers. The footage from within the tunnel shot by Dom and Yuan has since become damaged. After Dodo is born, Ronan leaves her at a foster care home and seeks psychiatric help.
In the present, Ronan has recovered and is taking Dodo to live with her, feeling ready for this new chapter. However, Dodo is troubled by a malevolent presence and develops a debilitating illness. When social workers arrive to take Dodo away, believing that Ronan is unsuitable, the mother and daughter escape with the help of Ming, the sympathetic manager of the foster home. They bring Dodo to a shrine, where a priest and his wife forbid her from eating for the next seven days. However, when runes appear all over her body, Ronan, in desperation, feeds her. The priest and his wife are violently killed, and Dodo's condition worsens.
Ming travels to Yunnan to consult an elder monk who specializes in translating Buddhist esoteric scriptures and has the damaged tunnel footage professionally restored. After watching the restored footage, he becomes possessed and kills himself. The footage reveals that Dom and Yuan encountered disturbing items laid out ritualistically throughout the tunnel, which led to the altar of Mother-Buddha. When Dom removes the veil from Mother-Buddha's face, he becomes possessed and dies. Yuan manages to escape but is violently killed by unseen forces. The villagers burn Dom's body, and their own bodies are also covered in runes.
Ronan confesses that she has been deceiving the viewers all along. The priest Ming visited in Yunnan revealed that Mother-Buddha is, in fact, a malevolent entity brought from Southeast Asia to Yunnan. Submitting one's name with the incantation signifies agreement to carry her curse. Rather than conveying blessings, the incantation actually serves to dilute the curse; as more people chant it, the curse spreads, lightening the burden on those who bear it and resulting in fewer misfortunes befalling them. Mother-Buddha's face must be covered because it is the source of the curse.
Ronan returns Dodo to the foster home and travels back to the tunnel in the now-abandoned village. At the altar, she reveals Mother-Buddha's face on camera, intending to curse the viewers to save her daughter. She then becomes possessed and dies. The film concludes with a happy and healthy Dodo, implying that the burden of her curse has been shared with everyone who watched the film, thereby lessening its effects.
The film is inspired by an incident in Gushan District, Kaohsiung in 2005. A family of six had claimed that they were possessed by various Chinese folk religion deities and accused each other of being possessed by demons masquerading as deities. They burned each other with incense, hit each other with sticks and spirit tablets, and splashed feces and urine on each other in an attempt to expel the demons. In the end, they singled out the eldest daughter and attacked her until she died of her injuries. The five remaining members of her family were subsequently charged with the offense of "abandoning a helpless person resulting in the person's death". The case was considered one of mass hysteria.
Kevin Ko explained that the Mother Buddha, hand gestures, chant, symbols, and everything associated with the religion in the film are all fictitious. Much of the budget was spent on the design and production of the props, especially the large statue of the Mother Buddha.
The image of the Mother Buddha incorporated elements from Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism.
Incantation was showcased at the Network of Asian Fantastic Films (NAFF) project market during the 2019 Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival before entering production and going on to become the highest-grossing Taiwanese horror film. The film was released in Taiwan on March 18, 2022, and also screened at the Far East Film Festival. In June 2022, Netflix announced that it would distribute the film worldwide on July 8, 2022.
As of June 2022, Incantation has grossed (), making it the highest-grossing 2022 film in Taiwan. It became the highest-grossing Taiwanese horror film of all time.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 75% based on 12 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10.