Incantation

Li Ronan (Tsai Hsuan-yen) is getting her daughter Dodo back home after her being looked after by the state for several years due to Li Ronan's mental health problems.

She records a video diary so her daughter can have it to look back on.

Once Dodo is home things initially go well but she starts to behave erratically and talk about there being "baddies" in the home and at school.

Li Ronan realises that she has not been able to escape the past but seems powerless to do anything without reliving the things that drove her to abandon Dodo in the first place.

Taiwanese found footage horror that is very heavy on wildly swinging camera footage and torches pointing erratically into darkened rooms. If that annoys you avoid this, I almost switched it off.

As the story unfolds it flashes back to when Li Ronan was involved in amateur "ghostbusting" and there's some really quite sinister Buddhism adjacent creepy imagery.

It's spooky and effective but also feels like lots of spooky events thrown together without it always being consistent. Maybe it just lost something in the subtitles but I'm not convinced as there are real narrative jumps/gaps. Things happen and don't seem to be followed up on, but also sometimes things just happen and its a bit "er, what?". It's also too long with the fateful night of ghost busting being stretched out a lot.

Also like most found footage movies it really stretches belief on how long the camera can be rolling pointed at odd goings on.

Overall though I'm glad I watched this and its weirdness kept me glued to the screen throughout, 7/10.