The Medium (2021)

directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun

Thailand, South Korea

131 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I was extremely excited for this. It seemed like every mention of it I saw online was someone calling it the scariest movie they'd ever seen, and I'd heard so much high praise for it that it became one of my most anticipated of the year. And... well. I definitely won't say it disappointed me, but with hype like that, I guess it's hard to meet expectations. This was a good movie, but not the non-stop thrill ride I was hoping it might be. That might just be personal preference, because possession horror doesn't do anything for me. And before I start, I want to be clear: Scariness is not the metric by which I measure a horror film's quality. It never will be. But in this case, I'm focusing on the scare factor because that's specifically what The Medium is getting so much buzz for.

So the movie starts slowly, with a documentary crew introducing their subject, a woman living in the rural hills of Thailand who is the village's main shaman, possessed bodily by a god called Bayan. The place where she lives is rife with gods, they inhabit every little object and represent any and every occasion, and the villagers live with this as part of daily life, it's a neutral fact. I enjoyed how low-key this was, because in many films that focus on folk religion or tradition, they kind of invent an aesthetic that's so far removed from actual practice that it's like that awful Annabelle doll: So obviously creepy-looking that it can't pass for anything anybody ever created on purpose. The wide and inscrutable pantheon is left opaque, and although I don't believe spirituality is supposed to be the antagonist of The Medium, the way the villagers seem to be entirely at the whim of whatever forces they pray to is an unsettling takeaway.

It's quite a long movie, and it feels like it's divided into two distinct halves. Because of the length, you spend a lot of time getting acquainted with each of those halves, and when the first shifts into the second, it's genuinely great; the feeling of going into unfamiliar territory is disquieting and only gets worse as the film goes on. But at the same time, you start getting used to the film repeatedly reaching for new levels of horror, and so it becomes what feels like a contest with itself to see how over-the-top it can get. The first half of the movie is, in my opinion, the best, because it's not trying too hard and it's still eerie: The possession is subtle and, above all, relatable, because what's happening to Mink, the possessed girl, isn't the neck-swiveling, white-eyed melodrama of a typical possession film - it's shown as a bodily thing. It almost appears like she's having a miscarriage despite not being pregnant. She goes through horrific pain in her stomach and other areas, she bleeds heavily and vomits, but worst of all are the behavioral changes, horribly public and extremely embarrassing actions that she isn't in control of. This is one of the most frightening parts of the film because it's uncomfortable to imagine losing control of your body and your personality in such a fast and unstoppable way.

But like I said, this is a movie that ramps up and then keeps ramping up and doesn't stop. The possession goes from blood and pain to a state where nothing of the girl's original self remains. During the tail end of the second half, night vision is used heavily, and this is about where the film started losing me. It tries so hard to show things that are repulsive, disgusting acts that could only be done by a demon or somebody with no humanity left, that it almost becomes boring. Again, it is not so bad as many a possession film. The horrible acts committed by the girl under the influence of whatever that was aren't played up with cheesy evil laughter and overly-long speeches about the demon's loathing for puny humans. But it is sustained for so long and without stopping that I became used to it and then it was no longer interesting.

The found-footage element is by far the weakest aspect of the whole thing. I was really hoping it would play a bigger part, because I love found-footage films and the good ones are some of the creepiest horror movies I know. But it's woefully underused, and flat-out illogical considering the events of the end; there's not even a "these people all died and then we found their tapes blah blah" title card, the narrative just flouts logic without notice. There is also B-roll that looks far more professional than the rest of the film, and background music during tense scenes, two things that take away any real purpose to having a found-footage aesthetic.

The strongest point is that everybody in this is a really good actor. All the things I said about the ways that this differs from lesser possession films are mostly down to Narilya Gulmongkolpech, the actress who plays Mink, doing such an unbroken and relentless job portraying her. It's hard to believe she's a first-time actress, but I think maybe her "normal girl" vibe makes her spiral into possession more palpable. She shifts from being an average, somewhat bored-seeming young girl to something deeply evil so well that it's believable even while much of the rest of the film is not. And the people around her, although they don't have to shoulder the task of playing a possession victim, also feel real, and their sadness and fear feels real too.

All in all, I don't think there's that much wrong with this movie. It's very good and it's unlike a lot of other Thai horror I've seen. I usually don't like to generalize like that, but I'm doing it to make a point in this case, because not that many Thai horror films make it out of the country and into the international spotlight, and those that do are not like this one. I definitely picked up on influences from The Wailing, especially in the big finale exorcism scene, which could have been even longer and more intense in my opinion. I loved this as a horror movie and as a movie in general but I was let down by believing it would be far more frightening than it was.