Incantation (2022)

A woman named Li Ronan implores the viewer to memorize an insignia and chant an incantation to send blessings and lift the curse afflicting her six-year-old daughter, Dodo. The insignia and incantation are interspersed frequently throughout the film to encourage the viewer to play along. The events are presented as found footage in a non-linear manner. The written plot is presented in chronological order.

Six years earlier, a newly pregnant Ronan, her boyfriend Dom, and Dom's cousin Yuan break 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 centered around 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 soon emerges screaming, while Dom's dead body is carried out by the villagers. The footage shot within the tunnel 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 preparing to bring Dodo to live with her, feeling ready for this new chapter in her life. However, Dodo becomes troubled by a malevolent presence and develops a debilitating illness. When social workers arrive to take Dodo away, believing Ronan to be an unfit guardian, 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 instruct her not to eat for the next seven days. However, when runes begin appearing all over Dodo's body, Ronan desperately feeds her. The priest and his wife are then violently killed, and Dodo's condition worsens.

Ming travels to Yunnan to consult an elder monk who specializes in translating esoteric Buddhist 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 ritualistic objects throughout the tunnel, which eventually led them to the altar of Mother-Buddha. When Dom removes the veil covering 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 likewise covered in runes.

Ronan confesses that she has been deceiving the viewers all along. The priest whom Ming visited in Yunnan revealed that Mother-Buddha is, in fact, a malevolent entity brought from Southeast Asia to Yunnan. Submitting one's name along with the incantation signifies agreement to bear her curse. Rather than conveying blessings, the incantation actually serves to dilute the curse; as more people chant it, the curse spreads, reducing the burden on any single individual and resulting in fewer misfortunes befalling them. Mother-Buddha's face must remain 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 in order 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.