The Medium 2021

Nim [Sawanee Utoomma] is a local medium who claims that Ba Yan, a traditional deity of the Isan region, occasionally takes control of her body. A documentary crew travels to northeast Thailand to interview her, hoping to understand the beliefs that bind Nim to this ritual identity. Nim explains that she was chosen to be Ba Yan’s host after her sister Noi [Sirani Yankittikan] refused the role and chose Christianity instead, an act that set Nim on a solitary path within her family and community. The film opens with Nim attending the funeral of Noi’s husband, Wiroj, who dies after a battle with cancer, and it quietly layers in the larger pattern of misfortune that seems to haunt the men in their lineage. Wiroj’s father, a factory owner, has a dark chapter of his own, having killed himself after being caught in an insurance fraud scheme, and Wiroj’s son Mac dies in a traffic accident—twinned tragedies that weigh heavily on Noi and her children.

Noi, left with her daughter Mink, continues life with Manit [Yasaka Chaisorn] and his family, creating a fragile, crowded household where old wounds and new pressures collide. Mink begins behaving in unsettling, fragmented ways: she slips between multiple personalities—an attention-seeking child, an elderly man, a drunkard, and even a former prostitute—while hearing voices, suffering nightmares, and showing physical symptoms like abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. She loses her job after her boss discovers she has sexual relationships with different men at work, a detail that deepens the tension around her already unstable life. At first, Nim interprets these experiences as the signs Ba Yan has chosen Mink to be the next vessel, but Noi pushes back, refusing to consent to any ceremony that would transfer Ba Yan’s spirit from Nim to Mink.

As the days unfold, Nim learns a more troubling truth: Mink had an incestuous relationship with Mac, who has since died by suicide, and Nim wonders whether Mac’s ghost haunts Mink. Noi, feeling increasingly punished by Ba Yan for her initial refusal, makes a bold move. She arranges with another medium, Santi [Boonsong Nakphoo], to perform a transfer of Ba Yan’s spirit into Mink without Nim’s knowledge or approval. The ceremony goes wrong; Mink is not simply possessed by a single spirit but becomes the vessel for multiple hostile presences. The attack on her mother follows, and Mink runs away, forcing Nim to confront the possibility that the ritual has gone disastrously awry.

In the wake of the failed transference, Nim urges Noi to open her heart to Ba Yan and seek forgiveness, and Noi agrees to accompany Nim to Ba Yan’s shrine to pray. About a month later, Mink surfaces in a delirious state at the ruins of her grandfather’s factory. Nim returns to the shrine only to find Ba Yan’s statue decapitated, a stark symbol of the disruption rippling through their world. Mink taunts Nim, revealing that Noi did everything possible to push Nim into the role of shaman—placing talismans in Nim’s shoes and shaping her clothing—suggesting the conflict over who should bear Ba Yan’s power is deeply personal and destructive.

Desperate, Nim seeks out Santi again, this time with a clear sense that Mink is haunted by numerous evil spirits. Santi and his students diagnose Mink as a host for a swarm of spirits, and they explain that Mink’s paternal ancestors were cursed for offenses long past, a curse that has amplified the family’s misfortunes. The plan shifts toward a dramatic exorcism: Nim, Santi, and his circle prepare for an elaborate ritual to sever the hold of the spirits and trap them away. In the days leading up to the exorcism, Mink unleashes chaos at home—abducting Manit’s son, boiling and eating the family dog, and engaging in other disturbing acts—until Nim dies in her sleep the night before the ceremony.

The ritual goes ahead at the abandoned factory, with Noi offering her body as a vessel to attract all of Mink’s tormenting spirits so that Santi can exorcise them, trap them in a container, and bury the source of the trouble deep underground. The home is sealed with paper charms to keep Mink inside while the exorcism attempt unfolds, and the ritual’s tension peaks when Manit’s wife, hearing her son’s crying from Mink’s room, enters to find Mink and is fatally stabbed. Chaos erupts as the possessed seethe and drive the participants to turn on one another, fighting and killing in a frenzy that spills beyond the walls.

Meanwhile, Mink makes her way to the factory where a few survivors have gathered. Now fully possessed, she confronts Noi and even claims the role of Ba Yan again as she torments and finally burns Noi’s mother alive. The circle of survivors collapses under the weight of the spirits, leaving a bleak aftermath in the wake of the ritual’s collapse.

A mid-credits scene offers a quiet, haunting coda: Nim experiences a crisis of faith, wondering whether she has actually been possessed by Ba Yan or if the whole experience has been a product of her own mind—and, in a final, devastating sense, she confronts that uncertainty as she faces death.

The film lingers on this tension between belief and doubt, across a landscape of ritual obligation, familial curses, and the perilous reach of possession, leaving viewers with a stark meditation on faith, fear, and the price of unspoken legacy.