By RYAN DYER
Starring Narilya Gulmongkolpech, Sawanee Utoomma, Sirani Yankittikan
Written by Cha-won Choi, Chantavit Dhanasevi, Na Hong-jin
Directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun
Far East Films
From acclaimed horror auteur Banjong Pisanthanakun (Shutter, Pee Mak) comes a new vision of spiritual possession based in his homeland of Thailand. For this film, he teams with Korean writer and producer Na Hong-jin (The Chaser, The Wailing) to combine Thai folklore horror with a slick and modern Korean production style to produce one darkly entertaining film.
The Medium takes place in the uncharacteristically not-very-sunny, green, or picturesque rural area of Thailand, Isan, where a documentary team is covering a medium (or shaman) who is possessed by a spirit named Bayan. Bayan is not content with one body and has been jumping from vessel to vessel for generations. The villagers worship this spirit, which is represented by a statue at a shrine in the forest, and are shown dancing around it in ceremonial fashion.
Bayan has chosen a different successor, the medium’s cousin Noi, but because Noi turned to Christianity, Bayan turned its energy to the next of kin: her daughter Mink (Narilya Gulmongkolpech). The documentary crew starts to notice Mink’s unnerving behavior, obviously tainted by Bayan. She scares small children at an indoor playground, becomes promiscuous, her physical appearance deteriorates (her face turning a charcoal black) and she begins to show Reagan-like symptoms – vomiting, shouting obscenities, and ripping off her shirt in hopes that her close relatives will cop a feel. The family tries in vain to conduct a ceremony in order to extract Bayan from the girl. Later, the decapitated statue of Bayan is discovered, meaning that perhaps what is possessing Mink is far more sinister than what was originally thought.
The Medium, as far as possession films go, does follow a lot of the tropes that were perfected in The Exorcist, and truthfully, it’s hard to improve upon them no matter how many years pass and how many new tools filmmakers have to utilize. Thankfully, what The Medium does have going for it is a believable performance by Gulmongkolpech, who runs the gauntlet of portraying a number of different personalities, each seemingly more depraved than the last, as the film carries on and her condition worsens.
The rural Thai setting also works here as its unfamiliar and exotic – something you wouldn’t normally see in horror unless you put in The Wheel (from Three Extremes 2), The Boxer’s Omen, one of Pisanthanakun’s previous films, or even producer Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing (trading a Thai setting for rural South Korea). Pisanthanakun presents the rustic beauty of rural Isan with dilapidated temples and lone Monks providing an orange semblance of light and spiritual purity among the gray, overcast setting. The ceremonial procedures done to help cleanse Mink and her family members and even the few funerals shown in the film are also unique to the setting and enhance the arcane spiritual world presented here.
The documentary aspect to The Medium is sometimes forgotten, as gorgeous shots of Thai landscapes are sandwiched between interview or disturbing footage from the documentary team’s cameras, pulling the viewer out of an experience that is supposed to be intimate. However, the finale is full-on hand-held madness. While some of these documentary-style scenes featuring the possessed Mink roaming around her home at night, pissing on the table, and eating the family dog are unnerving, others feel a bit too cinematic.
There have been attempts to revitalize the possession genre since the standard was set with Friedkin’s The Exorcist, with films like American Guinea Pig’s Song of Solomon being an attempt to portray the stomach-churning result of a body being puppeteered by the malicious strings of something beyond the flesh. The Medium manages to sit at the top of this shrine by not playing it safe with its often disturbing (admit it, it’s hard to disturb these days) portrayal of possession. No character is written into the safe zone in this script, and the ending is not the simple girl-gets-better-and-everyone-goes-home-happy-cliche you would expect in something made out West. The cause of the possession is also not as simple as “corrupted innocence,” so while the actions of Mink are vile, it could be argued that they are not entirely unjustified.
As far as international horror is concerned, this The Medium gets a rating well above medium.
THE MEDIUM is now available on Shudder.
