For the avoidance of all doubt, I was wearing my mask properly, but the folk three rows in front of me weren’t. It was foreboding enough that when the usher suddenly popped up to do mask checks in the cinema (good on you, Golden Village!), I let out a soft shriek. The camera lingers shakily on the characters’ backs, making us wonder what is happening to them as we slowly inch towards yet another victim. As more victims get possessed, the film builds to a terrifying crescendo-all without ever showing us what exactly is possessing all these people. Thanks to the handheld camera, we don’t always get a clear shot of what she’s doing, creating this sense of helplessness. Once the movie goes into full swing, however, Mink’s possessions are violent, gory, and unnerving. Even the director noted the similarities between the shamanistic practices in Asian countries, showing how ingrained this is in Asian culture. Unlike Western horror films, where the supernatural lives in its own discrete realm, the tacit understanding in The Medium that we live in a world of unseen spirits makes it all the more relatable-and terrifying when the scares hit. With The Medium, horror exists in the small things-a quiet invocation here, a superstitious nod there. Here’s when Mink starts exhibiting classic tell-tale signs of becoming the next shaman of Ba Yan and is also where things start going horribly wrong for the family. But all that is upturned when she has to return home and help her sister Noi (Sirani Yankittikan) and niece Mink (Narilya Gulmongkolpech).Īnd yes, there is family drama (is there really any better type?) when the family’s legacy is unearthed concerning the inheritance of Ba Yan’s shamans. Foreign films are our only window to travel during this pandemic, so even if it were indeed a documentary about the shamanistic practices of the rural areas of Thailand, it would still be an effective one.įor all accounts and purposes, Nim leads a fairly idyllic life, albeit one filled with mysticism and rituals. The travel documentary aspect of the film lulls you into a false sense of security as you experience what life is like for the villagers and Nim. The Medium begins fairly innocuously (as much as a horror movie can) as a film crew documents the everyday life of Nim (Sawanee Utoomma), a shaman of the goddess Ba Yan. I do advice viewers inflicted with chronic vertigo or migraine to exercise due caution-some of the camera shots can get incredibly janky. That’s the recipe for Thai-Korean horror film The Medium, directed by Shutter’s Banjong Pisanthanakun and produced by The Wailing’s Na Hong-jin.įramed as a documentary about shamanistic practices in northern Thailand’s Isan area, The Medium employs a fly-on-the-wall shooting style to lend a sense of authenticity to the events depicted, which further intensifies the horror and terror of the movie. Show the viewers the eerie movements and uncanny contortions of possessed victims, litter scenes with macabre objects and animal corpses, and linger on shots that show how an everyday item is a little, well, off. ![]() Horror works best when it’s left up to the imagination. This review contains spoilers for ’The Medium’.
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