Co-written by Na Hong-jin (The Wailing) & directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun (Shutter), the film employs the faux-documentary format to narrate its tale of faith, inheritance, malaise & malison and gradually brings the viewers into its world of beliefs, curses & superstitions with its informative approach & natural acting from the cast. Powerful, petrifying & perturbing in equal measure, this Thai-South Korean supernatural horror reeks of death & devilry. The scariest film of the year so far and one of the creepiest entries in the world of horror in recent years, The Medium begins as a documentary about a shaman possessed by a local deity in North-east Thailand but soon develops into a dreadful & diabolical nightmare that you can't escape from.
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Its got a two hour plus run time, but it's worth the time and effort, as the found footage style allows you to see a culture that would otherwise remain alien to us. That means that this has a pedigree and why it won best feature film during the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival.
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Banjong Pisanthanakun also made Shutter (which was remade in English in 2008 by Masayuki Ochiai, as well as in Tamil as Sivi and in Hindi as Click) and producer and writer Na Hong-Jin made the serial killer movie The Chaser.
I mean, when you cook and eat the family dog, perhaps you aren't the shaman that will protect your village, you know? What I really loved about this movie was that it goes from found footage - expected - to something quite unexpected, a movie that transcends where others have been before. Yet as the movie continues, her daughter presents herself as perhaps the next in line, but it turns out that the spirits that want to enter her body are something.else. She's possessed by the god Bayan and just the latest in a long line of women in her family who have given their existence over to this deity. I don't want to be too hard on it, because it's in many ways a well made picture, it just doesn't live up to it's own potential.Ī Thai-South Korean horror movie? Let's do this! This film starts with a documentary being filmed in the northeast part of Thailand to show what happens in the life of a local medium named Nim. The whole thing seems to overstay it's welcome a bit, which is strange because the slow build seems to breeze by and it's only when things heat up that they start to feel redundant. Narilya Gulmongkolpech's performance is enthusiastic but is often reminiscent of haunted house staff doing the crazy/scary routine. The possession element does little to set itself apart from it's many contemporaries, aside from forgoing the regular Christian/Satan angle. Where the mocumentary initially lent credibility, it eventually devolves into the common found footage problem of "why would a real cameraman actually be filming this?" At one point reaching the height of ridiculousness where a girl has a mishap with her period and the camera follows her to the bathroom, like a psychopath. What you eventually get is a rather run of the mill possession tale, and things sort of fall apart from there. However, with the quality of the preamble, you grow to believe the film had something more clever up it's sleeve.
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The setup is slow but enjoyable and you begin to wonder if it's ever going to erupt into full blown horror. The faux doc style brings a realism to the mystic elements and it feels like a unique backdrop for a horror flick. The cinematography is great, and as much as they attempt to make things dreary, this thing could really function as travel vlog for Thailand. In the first leg it has a lot going for it. A terrific horror movie, a must see if you are a fan of the genre. While I could watch it with lights out (unlike the Thai cinemas whose audience demanded to watch it with lights on - if it is not a marketing sting), I recognize its hipnotic power upon me from start to finish, its ability to scare properly and the fact that I keep thinking about the movie after watching it.
It's a twisted, ballsy ending that works wonderfully with how the story was building up until that moment. The ending is much more filled with them, but that's not a downer for me at all. Until a more conventional third act (in a good way, though), the two thirds of the movie manages to scare the living daylights of you without cheap jump-scares, which is pure gold nowadays. The POV helps to introduce the audience into the reality of the story, so when the scares starts, it's a total knock-out. The performances are top notch and the filmmaking style a la found footage is very effective. It's more fast paced and much more entertaining than many movies under 90 minutes. Its more than two hours fly through a complex and engaging story revolving about family, legacy, curses and devilish fates. The Thai horror has just achieved a new step up into the genre with this bone-chilling, nerve-wracking movie.
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