#banjong pisanthanakun

[deluls]

You know... the reason you're like this is because of your beloved sister. She planned to get you to wear her clothes every day, she placed talismans in your shoes. She did everything to get you to be the shaman instead of her.

The Medium (2021) dir. Banjong Pisanthanakun

[twilightronin]

The Medium - Banjong Pisanthanakun 2021

[visitor-q]

[sloshed-cinema]

The Medium [ร่างทรง] (2021)

I never want to hear the name ‘Mink’ uttered ever again. This film more than met my quota, screamed out, intoned, shouted, cried, you name it. All of these calls go out to the lost soul and victim-cum-antagonist of the film, a young woman who appears to be the next chosen shaman for the local deity Ba Yan, but is instead the vessel for something much darker. This disproves the enlightened centrism of The Exorcist: Believer—while ceremonies to rid a body of demons may be common the world over in a superficial sense, the procedures required to carry that out are incredibly culturally and spiritually specific. When The Medium gets to its pivotal ceremony, it’s incredibly intricate and chaotic and direct, all webs of white threads and sigils and gongs. This, along with the more formal documentarian style of the opening stretch was what filled me with hope for this film. It didn’t seem to want to resort to cheap, corny found footage nonsense that’s been rehashed infinite times before by this point. It’s disappointing that the film wants to have its cake and eat it too. The immediate leadup to the exorcism is a ClifsNotes version of Paranormal Activity, all spooky scares presented like flash cards, and when things go south with the ceremony it quickly becomes just more shaky-cam chaos as people get killed left and right due to poor decision-making and listening skills. Horror can be pulpy and visceral, but it should still feel original. Tropes are a shorthand tool, not a crutch.

In a way, the film doubly slights the viewer. A central through-line seeks to comment on the conflict between religions in Thailand. In the Isan region, as the opening narration notes, the handling of spirituality is very specific, upheld since time immemorial. Buddhism intertwines with this for many, performed in reserved fashion as the titular shaman Nim favors, or with a more tent-revival flair as fellow practitioner Santi prefers. But Christianity exists, too, and a facet of this trauma emerges from Nim’s sister rejecting her faith for another. This factors into the tragic outcome, Noi repeatedly asked to take Ba Yan back into her heart but never fully accepting. But this operates on a purely surface level. Where a film like The Wailing uses a conflict like this not only on an aesthetic or plot level, but also to comment on social conflicts through a lens of horror, The Medium simply points to a disparity and says “this exists.” Thanks, I kinda noticed that before.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says 'Mink'.

Someone is standing menacingly in a scene.

Intertitles appear in a scene.

BIG DRINK

Nim cracks an egg.

The documentarians are told to stop filming.

The film needlessly repeats itself.

[dricecchi]

[mtonino]

Cinediario 2022 - aprile

The Medium (2021) Banjong Pisanthanakun

[movie-gate]

Shutter (2004) dir. Banjong Pisanthanakun, Parkpoom Wongpoom

[adamwatchesmovies]

Shutter (2004)

Shutter makes up for its occasionally scrappy filmmaking with surprising twists and a conclusion that burns itself into your memory. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the Hollywood remake but I remembered enough to “know” what was going to happen. Despite this, I was drawn in by the mystery and jumped in my seat enough times to call this Thai horror film a success.

Driving home after a friend’s party, Jane (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee) hits a woman with her car. Her photographer boyfriend Tun (Ananda Everingham) convinces Jane to keep driving. Soon after, Tun discovers strange shadows and images in his photographs. It seems the woman they left dead on the road has come back to make them pay.

Directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom, Shutter doesn’t deviate much from the "J-horror" formula. The spirit appears intermittently, prompting the protagonists to gather clues about the apparition's past. They think they've found a way to appease it, but then there's a twist, etc. What makes it successful nonetheless is the way these elements are handled. Some of the scares are less “fill the room with dread” and more “quick, shocking images” but the ghost (Achita Sikamana) is still creepy. Seeing her bathed in red light as she emerges from a chemical bath inside a darkroom is unnerving. Jane is likeable despite her transgression at the beginning and there’s just something about the movie that makes you feel uneasy - in a good way. You want to know what’s going on and the more you learn about the girl, the hungrier you are for answers.

Certain aspects of photography itself help make Shutter work. That moment of uncertainty between the flash and the polaroid picture developing, or between the paper being dunked into the chemical bath and the details coming into focus builds great suspense. The camera puts us in the shoes of the photographer every time a shot is snapped. They look through the viewfinder and click the button. From there, either the coast is clear, or the ghost is right in front of them. Either way, you're sweating.

Though an element of the conclusion requires you to kind of know what social norms are like in Thailand, it isn’t so foreign that you can’t understand why the characters are behaving the way they are and everything surrounding it is upsetting in a very human, very universal way. The final scene is so twisted you kind of want to smile but you’re still reeling from the horrors that preceded it and won’t be able to. So often, horror films over-explain or lose steam towards the end. Shutter ramps up the horror and then concludes as the terror is at its peak.

You can see why Hollywood opted to remake Shutter. Some of the performances aren’t quite convincing, you can see how it could be made scarier and unlike other tales of this kind, relocating the story to another country would be easy. The fact that it turned out so awful is now even more perplexing. So what if you’ll have to read subtitles? Stick with this Shutter. (Original Thai with English subtitles, August 13, 2021)

[billybutcher]

Shutter

[stuff-diary]

Shutter

Movies watched in 2023

Directors: Banjong Pisanthanakun & Parkpoom Wongpoom

Writers: Banjong Pisanthanakun, Sopon Sukdapisit & Parkpoom Wongpoom

Mini-review:

This Halloween season I was in the mood for something different to the usual Western horror movies, so I decided to finally watch this Thai classic. Tbh, since I've watched sooooo many horror films, I could clearly tell what was gonna happen and I predicted every single twist. Despite that, the whole thing was really creepy and it managed to keep me hooked. On top of that, there's some pretty memorable imagery in here, and a lot of the scary scenes are very creative as well. My biggest complain is probably that one triggering scene, which needn't be that graphic to make its point. Anyway, I enjoyed this quite a bit, and now I can cross another horror classic from my 'to-watch' list.

[all-maroon]

The Medium (2021) dir. Banjong Pisanthanakun

ร่างทรง

[visitor-q]

[thebutcher-5]

Shutter (2004)

Benvenuti o bentornati sul nostro blog. Nello scorso articolo abbiamo ripreso a parlare di cinema d’animazione, senza però concentrarci su Disney, Pixar o altri grandi studio, bensì su una perla francese che ancora oggi ha veramente tanto da dire ossia Ernest e Celestine. Nella storia ci vengono presentate due civiltà: quella degli orsi che vive in superficie e quella dei topi che vive nel…

[girltomboy]

My boyfriend got randomly recommended an instagram reel about a horror movie and he sent it to me so I could maybe do some research on it so we could watch it (this is how our movie-watching dynamic functions at the moment). The movie was "The Medium" and it's a Thai horror about a gradual demon possession. We watched it this weekend online on a random website where it had some pretty simplistic subtitles. And oh my god, it was such an unforgettable experience, I don't think we're ever going to find a movie like that again. We had absolutely no idea what we were going into, and the movie was enticing right from the start, it had a way of telling the story that reeled you in and got you wanting to know more and more. And it progressively got more and more bizarre and insidious and it felt like we were not only witnesses to the madness, but participants as well.

The cultural and historical aspects blend extremely beautifully with the raw, obscene horror. Religious symbolism loops into different directions, evil spirits go beyond their victims and even those are multifaceted. It's a movie that succeeds in every category, even its length makes the narrative delightfully stretched and savourable.

Aside from the story's character and progression, the movie was also made more fascinating by the subtitles; they were not very thoroughly translated, it felt more like they were translated word from word from the Thai original. And you could almost parse the structure of the Thai sentence from its English translation. It made the watching experience even more immersive and engaging.

We've been trying to recreate that ecstasy of finding such a rare and mind-altering gem with other horrors, but they just did not hit the same spot.

[pynkhues]

My December list!

December 2023 Movie Challenge

Hayao Miyazaki's latest, The Boy and the Heron, comes out this month! Watch any Studio Ghibli film, or any animated film.

Wonka also comes out! Watch any Roald Dahl adaptation, or any movie directed by the film's director, Paul King.

The holiday season is a busy time of year, so why not watch a movie that's 90-minutes or less? Some suggestions.

Speaking of the holiday season, Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanza are all this month, so watch any movie based around one of the holidays.

Watch a movie with a great dance sequence. Some suggestions.

Watch a movie about women, by a woman. Some suggestions.

The Exorcist turns 50 this month. Watch any movie about a possession.

Being Australian, I tend to associate this time of year with the beach, so hey, let's watch any movie set on a beach.

Given it's the end of the year, why not tick something off and watch a movie that's been on your watchlist for a while.

The colour of the month is white: watch any movie with a predominantly white poster.

Happy viewing, and don't forget to share your lists :-)

[chinzhilla]

𝔗𝔥𝔦𝔯𝔱𝔶-𝔒𝔫𝔢 𝔇𝔞𝔶𝔰 𝔬𝔣 ℌ𝔬𝔯𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟺

We believe spirits are in every single thing. In houses, in forests, in mountains, in trees in rice fields. Every area has spirits. All of them.

The Medium (2021) dir. Tong Banjong Pisanthanakun