One Of The Scariest Scenes In The Medium Catches A Creeper On Camera
(Welcome to Scariest Scene Ever, a column dedicated to the most pulse-pounding moments in horror with your tour guides, horror experts Chris Evangelista and Matt Donato. In this edition, Matt turns the camera on "The Medium.")
Part of me wanted to theme this week's Scariest Scene Ever to "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts," but has there been a memorably scary film about robots? Like, the clucky-and-bolty mechanical kind in "Transformers" movies? I didn't have the time or energy to dig deep for selections, so I turned toward my favorite purveyor of streamable nightmares. I fired up Shudder, sped through their catalog, and decided we needed to talk about "The Medium" because not enough people talk about "The Medium" as one of 2021's top horror films. Shots fired, I know, big talk.
"The Medium" is a Thai-South Korean documentary-style horror film from the minds behind "The Wailing" and "Shutter." It's a marathon effort that welcomes outsiders into Thailand's off-the-grid shaman practices, slowly unfurling into a fearful explosion of multiple subgenres colliding in a bloody, outrageous finale. At its best, it's the closest feature film we'll ever get to the "V/H/S/2" segment "Safe Haven." Some supremely freighting sequences are sprinkled through this culturally rich horror story about warped traditions, maximizing found footage presentations with a sinister supernatural smirk.
The setup
The film follows a documentary crew who travels into Thailand's luscious and leafy Isan region to interview Nim (Sawanee Utoomma), a medium, aka shaman, who says to be possessed by the spirit of Ba Yan, a local goddess. Nim accepted the role of host after her sister Noi (Sirani Yankittikan) denied the duty and converted to Christianity. As the crew interviews locals and follows Nim, the weight of cultural beliefs contrasts against those who convert away from homeland rituals like Noi. It's a struggle of past versus present regarding ideologies until Noi's daughter Mink (Narilya Gulmongkolpech) starts displaying multiple personalities, and Nim's experience as a shaman proves vital.
The story so far
Mink's behavior becomes more erratic as the footage rolls — she displays personalities attributed to a child, a drunk, and a prostitute. Nim believes Ba Yan has selected Mink as her next host, but a more powerful shaman declares Mink a victim of multiple possessions. Mink tortures Noi, Noi's brother, and Noi's brother's family as her condition worsens night after night, pointing towards the need to excise whatever's controlling Mink. Cameras around the house where Mink now lives capture her torments in green-tinted night vision, with one particular occurrence taking the cake on domestic horrors with a possessed victim.
The scene
Plenty of CCTV footage will scare audiences stiff, but there's nothing better than the first shot we get of Mink in the clip above.
The camera is pulled back, fly-on-the-wall style, giving us a full view of the home's downstairs entrance and staircase upstairs. Someone walks in, minding their own business, and ascends step by step, unaware of a presence hidden somewhere. Our unadjusted eyes might miss it at first, but eagle-eyed viewers can spy the figure outline tucked away in the storage area under the stairs. It's faint, could be nothing, and is easy to pass over since there's plenty of screen area to digest with our eyes.
After the person clears the stairs, the figure starts to move. A head slowly peers out from the thick shadows, a bit blurry in the retracted position of the camera. Then the footage zooms in, and it's clear as day. Mink's possessed state is glaring at the camera with these dead, glazed white eyes, her mouth agape like a zombie. She's inhuman and staring through our souls.
As she emerges from the darkness, her head tilts side to side like she's unfamiliar with her surroundings. Her limbs appear longer like an illusion, bent and moving slowly like a cave-dwelling creature. It's no longer Mink, but a monster living underneath the staircase. Narilya Gulmongkolpech's physical performance as she morphs into a feral specter takes cues from J-Horror titles like "Ringu" or "The Grudge," nailing this "Where's Waldo of the Damned" vibe that is such a compelling portrayal of found footage horror does best. This slithery emergence of a malevolent force goes on to do unspeakable things to the vessel's loved ones, summoned from the darkness for a shockwave of chills.
The impact (Chris' take)
Why does "found footage" create such a creepy feeling? It's voyeurism, that's my theory. There's something about watching footage from security cameras that makes us feel like we're seeing something we should not be seeing. There's also an added layer of reality — watching footage like this makes what's happening on screen feel legitimate. Watching a ghost (or in this case, a possessed person) on screen is fine. Watching the same thing appear on CCTV is terrifying. And while I didn't love "The Medium," the clip in question here gives me the heebie-jeebies, let me tell ya! Something about the way the figure appears in the shadows, slinking out like a humanoid cat, makes my blood run cold, gang.