A still from ‘The Medium’.
on billboard
Taking advantage of the mockumentary format, this award-winning film that comes from Thailand seeks to disturb the viewer with a story of possessions. It has swept the Asian box office
It could be seen at the Sitges Festival, in competition in its Official Section, this proposal of Thai nationality that suffers from excessive footage but manages to shake any spectator who gets carried away by its rhythm and intentions. In the images of ‘The Medium’, the concern grows over more than two hours of footage -something that obsesses this writer, the long minutes of the current premiere cinema-, taking advantage of the documentary format to bother with a greater realism to the viewer wanting strong sensations (which take longer than necessary to arrive). The shooting of an informative piece with interviews on shamanism turns into an enveloping nightmare directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun, responsible for genre titles such as ‘One Day’, ‘Pee Mak Phrakanong’ or ‘Shutter’. A young woman is possessed by an evil entity, referring to so many macabre proposals about exorcisms, a very cinematographic theme. After premiering at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival in South Korea, where it won the best film award, it has been a box office success in Asia, becoming the fourth highest-grossing Korean film last year. In our borders it has also won trophies, rising as the winning film at the Maniatic Film Festival in Manises (Valencia).
‘The Medium’ gets on the bandwagon of ‘found footage’, a trend in fantastic and horror since the bombshell of ‘Blair Witch Project’, a milestone in the art of audiovisual marketing. No one could imagine that an intelligent commercial campaign, supported by the Internet, a paradise of lies and urban legends, would catapult a play with a tiny budget to fame. Although ‘Cannibal Holocaust, a cult-movie that dominated the pages of the most sensationalist publications in 1980, had already set a precedent, the work conceived in 1999 by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, now disappeared from the artistic map, opened a path that is now well traveled Too much for the horror genre. The technique of “found material” seeks to scare the public by betting on images with a documentary aesthetic, with images recorded on camera by the protagonists of the macabre story. This time the action takes place in a rural village in the Isan region of northeastern Thailand. Its inhabitants fervently believe that spirits inhabit everything they see. A team arrives in the town to make a report focused on the figure of a shaman who is fully convinced that her niece is the future “vessel” of the goddess Bayan. The mystery is served because, as you can imagine, the girl does not behave as she was expected to deliver her soul. Is she a different entity than expected?
Video.
The trailer for ‘The Medium’.
The ‘found footage’, excessively squeezed lately, is the only ballast of ‘The Medium. Despite starting from such a hackneyed premise, its result is above average compared to other recent productions with a similar formal approach. As an immersive show, it manages to envelop the audience, although a cut in the montage would have benefited it. Every film that attends to this current tries not to stray from reality and to be as credible as possible. His goal is to immerse the viewer in the action as much as possible. For this reason, there are usually sequences shot with all kinds of devices, from mobile phones and home video cameras to security cameras, which allows proposals to be made with very tight budgets. The exploited saga ‘Paranormal activity’ is an example in this line. In specialized festivals such as the one in Sitges, these types of titles proliferate, which in their look resemble home video or television reportage. There they are, for example, the recommendable ‘V/H/S’ and sequels, and many other substitutes. In our cinematography we have the series ‘Rec’ or ‘La Cueva’, and there are examples with commercial flair at an international level, such as ‘Monstruoso’ or ‘La visita’, whose success indicates that the formula is far from showing signs of exhaustion.