Weekend watch: Thai-Korean horror flick ‘The Medium’ just hit Netflix Thailand

Supernatural horror aficionados looking to get some Netflix and CHILLS this weekend are in for a spooky treat – acclaimed Korean-Thai horror film The Medium is now streaming.

Directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun (Shutter) and written by Na Hong-jin (The Wailing), the faux-documentary flick follows a shaman priestess possessed by a local deity worshiped in her community in Isaan who fights family and demons to uncover why her niece is the target of a demonic possession.

Praised for its tense visual narrative filled with unnerving scenes involving cannabalism, incest, and animal cruelty, the 2021 horror flick takes a dive into Thai supernatural beliefs. It doesn’t take long for its ethnographic pretenses to break down into tropes about the fate of young women with sexual agency. 

The casual sexual encounters that Mink (Narilya Gulmongkolpech) doesn’t even remember not only open her up to possession, but a full gang-bang by a whole squad of specters running train on her soul.

The Medium was a joint production of Thailand’s GDH 559 and South Korea’s Showbox studios. It premiered last July at the 25th Buncheon International Fantastic Film Festival, and was awarded the Buncheon Choice Award for best feature film.

Audiences were grateful for its eschewing of the usual FX wizardry in favor of performance-driven thrills. (Narilya spends most of the second act crawling menacingly in her underwear, another sign its gender politics may be its scariest trait).

The film was also submitted as Thailand’s entry for Best International Film at the upcoming Academy Awards, although it did not earn a nomination.

The Netflix release has prompted fans on social media to sing their praises (as well as criticize) the film, and urge horror buffs who missed it the first time in theaters around Halloween to check it out. 

#RangZong, the film’s name in Thai, has trended atop the Thai Twitteverse today.

“It’s about time #RangZong,” MyOpoR2501 tweeted.

“For those who haven’t the chance to watch the movie on cinema or want to rewatch it, you can watch it on Netflix using Thailand VPN. Let’s go!” Plumparis wrote.