The Medium (2021)
A Thai-Korean horror film about belief, losing it, and what takes hold of you once you've given it the chance.
Welcome.
Coincidentally, my second newsletter of the month is another mockumentary horror, though it opposes this month’s first newsletter on Incantation (2022) in multiple ways. The Medium (2021)1 is a bit harder to find and the translation work is not its best aspect, but even if the film needs to be paused to properly put together an understanding of a scene, it is worth your time. The film centers on a medium2 named Nim, who is possessed by her village’s deity, Bayan. The documentary initially follows Nim (played by the amazingly moving Sawanee Utoomma) but things take a neck snapping turn when her niece begins showing signs of a possession of her own.
Before reading this newsletter, please note the following if you are or could be sensitive, triggered by, or have a difficult time with watching or discussing these topics, that the film and this newsletter should not be viewed: religious trauma, cannibalism, animal cruelty and death, self mutilation, incest, gore, demonic possession, familial trauma, sex while possessed, suicide, vomiting, and inner organ traumas involving sudden internal bleeding from the vagina3. If any of these would harm the viewer to experience visually, please skip this newsletter and this film.
Below the cut line, we will discuss the film. Thank you, and may all who enter be warned from here.
The Medium (2021) was directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun, who made other wonderful horror films like your ghastly guide’s favorite Thai horror film Shutter (2004)4. It was co-written and produced by another big-hitting horror creator Na Hong-jin, who has ballpark shattering smashes with The Chaser (2008), The Yellow Sea (2010), and of course his most recent phenomenal film The Wailing (2016)5. With a power couple collaboration between Thai and South Korean horror, you can expect two things right away if you are familiar with either or:
1.) It’s going to be raining - not for the whole film but when a thriller or horror film is set in Asia (this goes double for SEA!), it is usually typhoon/tsunami season! From April to November, giant oceanic storms bring heavy flooding and damage to the Eastern Hemisphere. The natural disasters are used in story telling as an instrument to show how dangerously unpredictable and pressured our characters are within a situation they cannot fully control. It’s also to show how absolutely miserable everyone feels about the current situation6. (On top of that, typhoons and tsunamis are just scary!)
2.) Misunderstood ghosts, spirits, or supernatural events. Similar to del Toro in the West, ghosts are not always the bad guys in the East - sometimes they are victims just trying to get any help they can to rest or stop a cycle of violence from repeating. The supernatural has never been taken lightly in Asia: deities, ghosts, demons, spirits, shamans, mediums, rituals, and omens are highly respected and feared in modern day living partly because of ancestral worship and animism belief. (There will be a long form essay on looking into global fears and beliefs one day…one day…)
3.) A plot centered around family, bonds, and humanity. Religion is usually a very core focus within Asian horror because ancient spirituality has never completely detached itself from the culture and society of the continent. Eastern belief is extremely rich and widely varied, I personally really enjoy learning about and having the privilege to experience and research further into aspects and systems of belief and practices.
The Medium focuses on all three of these central key aspects - rain included!
Nim, Isan, Bayan, and their family.
Nim is our central character and a medium for the deity Bayan, the village’s personal protector, who has possessed the women in Nim’s family for generations. Bayan’s shrine is nestled within a crevice in the hills of the village, decorated with beautiful flowers offered to the idol and seems very loved by everyone living there. ‘There’ is within Isan, the largest region of Thailand7, and a very densely diverse place to live among the mountains and plateaus. Our Thai film crew traveled to meet Nim -probably from somewhere like Bangkok - all the way to the Loei region of Isan to document daily life of a medium. Nim explains that her elder sister Noi (Sirani Yankittikan) was supposed to be next in line for the medium position with Bayan, but Noi denounced shamanism for Christianity and left Nim behind for Bayan instead.
While she is driving with the film crew, she tells them about the funeral they are headed to that day and they also encounter a dead black animal in the middle of the road8. The funeral is for Noi’s husband Wiroj, explaining how he committed suicide after committing insurance fraud by setting his father’s factory on fire after it went bankrupt. Mac, Noi and Wiroj’s son, had died in a motorcycle accident before his father’s suicide. The only surviving members of Wiroj’s family are Noi (Nim’s older sister) and her daughter Mink (Narilya Gulmongkolpech, Nim’s niece) who also practices Christianity and does not believe in shamanism9.
The funeral is full of people, food, and drinks, to mourn and to celebrate Wiroj. We meet Noi, their older brother and Mink’s uncle Manit (Yasaka Chaisorn), his wife and their newborn baby, Mink, and other people from their village as well as family members. Mink tries to attack her uncle soon after the funeral winds down in the evening, yelling about him calling her a ‘prostitute’ and hurling cards towards him from the game a group of friends and family were playing. Manit isn’t sure what Mink is referring to because he had not physically said anything at all until Mink demanded a response from him. The behavior is strange to everyone - even the crew - and she is asked a lot about how much she drank during the funeral, trying to find a ‘realistic’ reasoning behind the sudden outburst. Later, Mink is visited by an old blind woman who shows up after Nim notices she is still awake and sitting up in her bed. Nim also notices the blind woman, but ultimately goes to sleep. The next morning, Nim gets news that a neighbor had died the previous night in her sleep, which triggers an immediate panic over Mink.
Throughout the next coming days and weeks, things nosedive immediately after the funeral. Mink talks about hearing voices, having really awful and scary dreams, and suffers from very heavy abdominal pain and extreme bouts of menstrual bleeding an alarming amount of times on and off the clock. To make it stranger, Mink has multiple different personalities take hold of her including a child who bullies and shoves children into walls for no reason, a drunk who beats people for looking at her or asking a question on the bus home and gets kicked off multiple times, and a sex worker who takes different men into her place of work10 to have sex with. At first they ask Mink to stay home to recover from all of her health issues because she looks awful which is not taken well. When she tries to come back into work after a few days, they fire her after finding her recorded sexual encounters through the CCTV cameras set up inside the building. Mink is again furious about this - but it seems like she has no memory of even doing that or most of her outbursts.
Nim believes that Bayan might be trying to move from her to Mink and tries to explain this to Noi. The sudden bleeding and frenzied behaviors might be explained by the deity attempting to show Nim that Mink is next in line - but Noi denies Nim a ritual to be performed on Mink that will transfer Bayan spiritually to her daughter and for the body to accept the deity safely. This could be because of a few reasons, but Noi’s refusal screams ‘I’m Christian and we don’t want Mink to be a shaman or Bayan around because we do not believe in that’ moreso than wanting to have a benefit of a doubt that her sister might be right. However, Bayan passed over Noi because she denounced their belief system and therefore could not interact or affect her past that line drawn taut between them. So why would Bayan be trying to possess Mink, who is also Christian and openly stated disbelief in shamanism?
Nim realizes she could be wrong about Bayan after finding out that Mac didn’t die in a motorcycle accident at all. In fact, Nim had been lied to the entire time about her nephew’s death - he killed himself by hanging from an old tree, because of his incestuous relationship with Mink. Completely shocked, overwhelmed, and upset by this new knowledge, Nim believes that Mac’s ghost is he one torturing and possessing Mink to kill her. At a speed I have only ever seen prominently in earth signs, Nim gathers pieces of physical things left behind by Mac with the help of her brother, placing a ritual strategically tied to the tree that Mac’s rope still partially hangs from. Meanwhile, Noi discovers Mink at home in the shower having cut both of her wrists open. Taking this as a sign from Bayan as punishment for her refusing to accept the deity when it was her turn, Noi schedules an Acceptance Ceremony for Mink out of desperation and fear for her daughter’s life being at its end. However, Noi does not inform Nim about the ceremony and asks another shaman to perform it. When Nim finds out that the ceremony is being done without her, she rushes to stop it, realizing that Mac nor Bayan are involved in Mink’s rapidly declining health and possession.
Mink runs away immediately after the ceremony is interrupted, resulting in a whole month of the her family, the film crew, and the village trying to look for her. Expending valuable time, resources, and energy, Nim finally recieves a sign to lead her in the direction of Wiroj’s father’s burnt down husk of a factory. The building itself is a towering and blackened scar despite its surroundings being lushly green and full of life. Even though it has been overtaken by some parts of nature, the natural things that do touch or grow within the building are obviously sickly or tainted by the evil that resides within11. Mink's health continues to decline when she returns home. Rightfully stressed with this whole situation, Nim decides to go into the mountains to the tucked away Bayan idol to pray and talk to the deity - only to find that someone had cut its head off12. Desperate for help and now feeling powerless to do this on her own, Nim rushes to find assistance through her close friend and fellow (very tall) shaman, Santi (Boonsong Nakphoo).
After having a long discussion with him, Santi informs Nim that the ceremony done on her niece did all the wrong things, including giving every spirit in the vicinity the ‘okay’ to inhabit her. It only gets even worse: the spirits that have taken up house inside of Mink are the hundreds of people that Wiroj’s ancestors had beheaded. Nim, Santi, and Santi’s students all agree that the preparations of a huge exorcism should be gathered and readied immediately. The audience already knows how extensive and resource-heavy this sort of thing was just to set up to speak to Mac’s spirit and find Mink, so there is no surprise at just how much stuff has to be done over days of non-stop work from multiple individuals. During their preparation days, there is a radical shift into disturbing events (and really gnarly scary and gross imagery) that Mink inflicts upon those around her in the house while the family waits for the shamans to finish. Some of the things included are boiling the family dog alive and eating parts of it, climbing into her mother’s bed and taunting her, and kidnapping her uncle’s newborn. The day before the exorcism ritual, Nim is found passed away in her bed without explaination13.
Santi and the remaining family prepare the ritual in and around the factory without Nim. The shamans use Noi as a vessel to try to take the spirits out of Mink and bait them towards her mother instead, where they would be properly dispelled. Unfortunately as this is an exorcism, the family still at home with Mink falls near-immediately to supernatural tricks and cause the Yantra cloths sealing evil away and preventing others to come into the ritual spaces to be ripped by Mink’s aunt-in-law. Think of it like hooking a finger on a clothesline, yanking it back, and releasing it - the whole line will shake and swing for a while before it starts to calm down. The immediate break of the primary safety cloths allow evil spirits to breach the ritual by severing that connection from Mink to Santi, his students, and Noi in the factory. The ritual has ultimately failed before it was even properly beginning. The efficient possession and violence taking hold of the entire third act is pretty overwhelming both to the audience and the characters on the each side of the ritual process telephone. Everyone becomes possessed14 and rush each other as if the spirits taking over to puppet their body for a little while are trying to play a game of ‘who can kill the most the fastest’. Tag: but with murder and cannibalism.
Noi is possessed twice, by evil and then by a force of good that pushes or overwhelms the evil spirit out, causing sudden clarity and belief it was done by (in her belief) Bayan - or perhaps Nim (my own belief) - in an attempt to continue and finish the ritual. Though this is a breath of hope for Noi, the audience might know that it is a very false glimmer. Noi directs the last of the shamanic students who are still somehow alive and prays while touching Mink, though her daughter calls out to her as a child to a parent, and creating that hesitation in Noi is all it takes for Mink to light her on fire. The ending shot of the film is from a camera on the ground, pointed as it fell towards the wall, the agonizing gutteral screaming and crying of Noi being burnt alive accompanies our focus: a wooden doll, impaled with needles, with Mink’s family name (‘Yasantya’) carved into its front.
Halfway through the credits, a small scene plays to make audience members sticking around and trying to process the entire third act even more upset. A daughter burning her mother alive and relishing it apparently was not enough of a kick to the ribs to send the film off with. Some may find this even more upsetting, as the floating wisp writing this did, but the scene is Nim’s final interview in the final crunch day of the big exorcism preparations - and her sudden death. There is a lot of frustration and very obvious outward distress as she tries to set up her own preparations at home. Having spent enough time with the documentary crew and having built an even stronger trust with them, Nim expresses to them her concerns about Bayan. She questions her life, the practices she’s done, and if Bayan even possessed her after Noi rejected the deity. The crisis the audience and the film crew try to wade through with Nim ends abruptly as she shuts herself in her bedroom. It leaves the audience and the crew and her siblings in the dark about her death and how it happened so quickly - and to consider what could have caused it.
The Medium asks a lot of questions on what belief is and means within its story. Is it practice, your family, the culture or village? Is it the steps taken to prevent harm, tragedy, or to right a wrong? Is it a position needing to be filled when the shoes are empty - even when needles are embedded into the soles? Is it in ancestral deities and a duty to continue the generational cycle of being their catalyst? Is it in the evils of others, causing a continual cycle of violence in response to the violence done to hundreds they slaughtered many years in the past? Is it something you are born into or is it nurtured through circumstance? Is it born instinctually or is it instituted?
Does believing in something require cumulative time to “work” or be a “true” belief or bring “life” to what is being believed in? Would something have power taken away if you “disbelieve” it? Having to disbelieve something requires belief to be turned away - so do you really have that power against belief to choose what does and does not have power over someone when - in this situation - it is invisible?
Nim’s answer to that is in one of the interviews when we just start to get to know her: belief doesn’t have to be seen to be ‘real’ to someone. Yet later, she doubts, and she dies.
So what do you believe in?
Floating always,
Han
It is kindly (please picture air quotations being gestured) pushed underground in search options and further researching efforts thanks to the awful next gen AAA video game of the same title, which came out in 2021 as well.
The definition of medium for the sake of this newsletter and better understanding of the term: “a person claiming to be in contact with the spirits of the dead and to communicate between the dead and the living”. The word literally derives from 'middle’/’medius’, meaning Nim is the mid-point of Bayan and village. Nim can answer the phone and hear what Bayan needs to say, then relay it to the village and be their pair of hands to get work done. So I would not agree to use the term possession to describe Nim and Bayan’s relationship, because though Nim ‘belongs’ in a sense to Bayan, Bayan in no way takes control of Nim physically or forcefully like we are used to in the Western sense. However with this being in mind, I will continue using the term possession when referring to Nim and Bayan because it might be culturally relative, and I might be reading too into the usage.
A LOT of people were very disturbed by menstrual blood - I wasn’t aware this could be a potential trigger for viewers…or if it is just something people find gross. As an individual with an internal vulva and menstruation cycles, I was extremely irritated by reading so many negative reviews that focused way more on how ‘gross, shocking, disgusting’ viewing a period is rather than worried for the character’s rapidly declining health the number of times it occurs or the immediate worry in what it symbolizes to the audience. It is added to this list of content warning for clarity and to dissuade people from viewing the film in case they are within the same mindset or just don’t like lots of blood suddenly happening.
DO NOT WORRY: a newsletter will be made to accompany this film!!
These will ALL also be covered in the future. Me and the bats love Na Hong-jin.
We can also put having hard rain consistently for hours alongside a loss of evidence - blood, bodies, mudslides, flash flooding, people being swept away or simply evading justice (and questions both audience and characters have!) by allowing themselves an alleyway or back door in the chaos.
To find the Isan region on a map, look for the Mekong River! It borders the area’s north and eastern sides and separates Isan from Laos. ‘Isan’ is also used to refer specifically to north-eastern Thailand since the 1900’s and mark themselves separately from central Thailand. The people of Isan identify differently from their state after over a century of being colonized and assimilated to become part of it - people from Isan sometimes identify as Lao Isan or just Lao, though there is a lot of controversy about that self identification because of Thailand’s history, and the constant bombardment of non-indigenous settlers seizing the entire country through imperialism, breaking it into pieces, then those pieces fighting over wanting all the other pieces. (You know, like the entirety of North American history, if you need something from the West to compare. Italy as well comes immediately to mind with the Romans. India and China also went through the moving in, breaking, fighting, breaking, fighting, etc. cycle - and aided to creating Thailand’s.) Isan is the poorest region despite being the agricultural producing region, and holds a third of the populous of Thailand. Thailand’s politics and cultures have always been highly debated and spiderwebbed, but Isan holds amazing ancient history, arts, and natural wonders of awe like Klang Kao cave.
Awesome vibes already, this funeral is not going to be the inciting incident ground zero at all, no way.
At multiple points throughout the film, Mink openly and speaks to the film crew about how baseless, stupid, and pointlessly backwards shamanism, being a medium, and believing in it is. She talks so down to this belief, that she sounds like she is placing herself above it, being ‘better’ within her own religious belief and following. It’s kind of upsetting to sit with the film crew and experience - they came here to document her aunt’s life as a medium after all.
An unemployment office, of all places.
There’s a wonderful establishing shot of the factory when Nim takes the crew with her up into the hills where it resides and it is one of the many breathtaking sequences of the film - whether or not the breath is leaving you out of awe or immediate dread is up to the viewer.
There is a hope that despite how a viewer was raised and what culture that might be within, religious or otherwise, there is a global understanding that taking a head off of a secular or sacred statue is akin to deep malicious intent, and to mock the person or deity that has been beheaded. The emotional output of this scene is near immediate and your scribe’s response was as well seeing that the idol in the distance was without a head long before Nim looks up to see the same. It sits heavy in the gut and grows denser when Nim approaches the area in utter despair. Huge standing ovation for Sawanee Utoomma for ripping my heart out with her strong calloused hands and squeezing.
A true final blow to any hopes I had for the movie having even a hint of a positive ending left with the discovery.
Including the film crew, which are one of the scarier and sadder moments.