Produced by Na Hong-jin of “The Wailing” fame, “The Medium” was one of the more hyped films last summer at the South Korean box office. Set entirely in Thailand, with a Thai cast and crew even, “The Medium” even had the honor of being the big draw for the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival this year, with sold out crowds in the midst of a pandemic. Yet the demonic horror film couldn’t even crack a million viewers. How come?
Advertisement
Well, let’s start with the salacious reason. The feminists hated it. Why exactly they hated it I wasn’t sure, and the critique hasn’t improved now that I’ve actually seen the movie. It’s just something about women being used as a plot device, despite the central characters all being women Fundamentally a family drama, the ostensible documentary starts out as a profile of the spirit medium Nim. Eventually the focus shifts to her niece Ming, who’s showing symptoms of shaman sickness.
For the first half hour “The Medium” is engaging as we watch Ming go through some rather discomforting and abrupt personality changes on-screen. Ming’s life is destroyed by forces beyond her comprehension as her family watches helplessly. “The Medium” then transitions into being a mystery with Nim investigating possible explanations for Ming’s behavior,. Nim is concerned from the start that these aren’t the symptoms of being infested by a kindly god.
But “The Medium” falls apart shortly thereafter for the simple reason that the explanations Nim comes up with make increasingly little sense. By the latter part of the movie I’d completely lost track of what characters were doing what and why, with Ming’s own powers radically shifting from plausible mental illness to her being some sort of voodoo queen. The terrible quality of English subtitles available as of this writing were of no help. Rest assured that even in Korean “The Medium” is just plain incoherent.
“The Medium” is also quite long, clocking in at over two hours to increasingly little purpose after Ming’s first disappearance. At one point director Banjong Pisanthanakun even starts counting down the days to a pivotal spiritual event. During this time all that happens is that Ming wanders around in front of cameras, doing gross weird stuff for no reason. An early montage showing the particular way a bewitched Ming has defiled her workplace is the high point. After that, nothing is even shocking, let alone scary. Mostly it’s just kind of gross.
The other big reason why the first half hour of “The Medium” is the strongest is because the pseudo-documentarian style gives us a pretty decent look at Thailand outside the cities. It’s a pleasant enough place, with a weird mishmash of modern and ancient ruins. Ming’s own appearance, coupled with her weird behavior gives an unsettling impression of a woman caught between worlds. Like literally, the two worlds are fighting each other using her body as a conduit with rather unpleasant results. Unfortunately, this genuinely intriguing presentation is mostly ruined when the story moves on to more boilerplate exorcist stuff.
Review by William Schwartz
___________
“The Medium” is directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun, and features Narilya Gulmongkolpech, Sawanee Utoomma, Sirani Yankittikan, Yasaka Chaisorn. Release date in Korea: 2021/07/14.
[HanCinema’s Film Review] “The Medium” (2021/09/30)
Source: Laban Lang Philippines
0 comentários :
Post a Comment