Watched Taiwan's 2022 Incantation (1:51:05). A mother recently recovered from a curse for breaking the rules of a Yunnan cult takes custody of her little girl from a foster home. She documents their life with a video camera. Strange things soon begin to happen.

The movie is terrifying despite its deliberately Brechtian, alienating, Blair Witch Project format and its series of flashbacks and flashbacks preceding flashbacks. It verges on the surreal, and is the equivalent of a nightmare. The viewer has no idea what will happen next. The unseen threats are diabolic and terrifying. You fear for the main characters--the mother and her child and the other victims--and ultimately for yourself, since you are repeatedly shown the sigil and are also subjected to its accompanying incantation.

The scenes are put together well and masterfully directed. For starters, this is the kind of movie that is difficult to act in, especially for a child pretending not to be acting in a movie. Many of the "videotaped" scenes, however, are not convincing--they are comprised of multiple camera set-ups that entailed multiple lighting set-ups, and some shots, especially close-ups of faces, are taken from unlikely and evidently-edited-in angles. The temple, cult altars, cult statues, cult offerings, and cult props are nonetheless very convincing.

The ending is not a sad one, it is a most unhappy one. It seems that both in Norway (cf. Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts) and in Asia, the sins of the father are visited upon his children. And yes, I watched this movie through the very last scene, the scene that irreversibly draws the audience in.

Loved those reversing ferris wheel and train illusions!