The Medium

Thailand's official submission to 2022's Oscars is the creepiest exorcism movie I have ever seen. It's so scary, brutal, captivating and provocative. It grabs your attention and keeps you on the edge of your seats from the very beginning until the credits start rolling. It's the year's best horror film so far.

At least 40 minutes too long with a terrible ending.

By the end of the movie everyone behaves like they've never had a brain in their head. They all deserve what happened to them in the end for being so dumb.

In the first leg it has a lot going for it. The cinematography is great, and as much as they attempt to make things dreary, this thing could really function as travel vlog for Thailand. The faux doc style brings a realism to the mystic elements and it feels like a unique backdrop for a horror flick. The setup is slow but enjoyable and you begin to wonder if it's ever going to erupt into full blown horror. Rest assured, it does. However, with the quality of the preamble, you grow to believe the film had something more clever up it's sleeve. What you eventually get is a rather run of the mill possession tale, and things sort of fall apart from there.

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. The possession element does little to set itself apart from it's many contemporaries, aside from forgoing the regular Christian/Satan angle. Narilya Gulmongkolpech's performance is enthusiastic but is often reminiscent of haunted house staff doing the crazy/scary routine. 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.

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.

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. Powerful, petrifying & perturbing in equal measure, this Thai-South Korean supernatural horror reeks of death & devilry.

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. It takes its time, is never in a hurry & starts to ratchet things up only after the audience is fully on board.

While suffused with a feeling of something sinister & unholy brewing under the surface from the beginning, the film's horror elements lunges to the forefront only after the board is set & all the characters are properly introduced. And the execution is genuinely effective & nerve-wracking. There are scenes in here that are downright shocking & disturbing but what lends those moments their uncanny weight & power are the thoroughly convincing performances.

Overall, The Medium is one of those unnerving horror offerings that feels cursed, brims with an ill-omened quality and is smeared with a blood-curdling atmosphere that only intensifies as plot progresses. Intelligently directed, deftly scripted, finely detailed & strongly bolstered by Narilya Gulmongkolpech's bone-chilling act, the film does run longer than it needs to but the terror it invokes from its eerie setting & skin-crawling imagery is as unrelenting as it is unsettling. Don't miss it.

Thai-Korean supernatural horror, Banjong Pisanthanakun's 'The Medium,' burns slowly but intensely throughout. It has all the elements of Asian horror unique to the Korean and Thai genres, such as creepy music and a darkly saturated filter. The film loses steam at times owing to flaws in its mockumentary style, but Pisanthanakun succeeds far more when he concentrates on the complexities of the familial links and what some of the key reveals imply for each character.