Movie Review: The Incantation (2018)
The Incantation is a horror film written and directed by Jude Walko. It’s his first writing and directing effort of a feature, and while it was an ok effort, there are a few things that held it back.
The first thing you will notice is that initially the main character, Lucy (Sam Valentine), is not very likable. She’s more focused on her selfies than the fact that her uncle has passed, and that she is staying in a castle. She is greeted upon her arrival at the castle by a creepy, monk-looking character (Jude Walko), and after her uncle’s service meets the housekeeper, Mary, and Abel Baddon (Dean Cain). It seems like Lucy’s demeanor changes a lot through the film, which is confusing at times. Sometimes she seems genuine, sometimes a selfish person. This isn’t uncommon, but the way it was written in some scenes seemed unnatural given how the character was presented.
Lucy starts having visions from time to time, which of course are relevant to the plot, but if there wasn’t dark ambient music throughout most of the film, you might not even know it’s a horror film. This was our only real gripe, but it’s an important one. The first hour of the film drags. It’s ok to have a film that’s dialogue-heavy, and it could be very well-done, but if you don’t have enough substance throughout the rest of the film to keep it interesting, it will suffer as a whole. This was the case with The Incantation. It had a good base, and some decent ideas to draw from, but it somewhat drags in the places it really needed to shine to succeed as a horror film.
As far as the production goes, the sound was great in some places, and not so great in others. There would be a scene where the music was well-timed or chosen, but we felt that the songs from musicians seemed forced in some scenes and didn’t need to be there. There were also a couple of scenes where the dialogue would sound like it was recorded in a large room without any sound dampening in weird spots like the florist outside. The cinematography in this film was not bad. We didn’t see anything wrong and feel like Walko also has a good eye for directing. The acting was pretty good as well, as there was a fair amount of experience among the main characters.
Overall, we feel like this could have been so much better. The concept was good, the cinematography, acting, and most of the production aside from some sound issues was ok. But the film as a whole felt like nothing was happening a lot of the time. This was definitely a good first effort as a directorial feature debut from Walko, but maybe he was stretching himself just a bit too thin with writing, directing, and acting as one of the key characters. The Incantation is available on July 24th on Amazon.
