31 Days of Asian Horror: The Pool (2018)

It’s Creature Feature Friday and today’s pick had been sitting in my Shudder list for a bit too long. Written and directed by Ping Lumpraploeng, The Pool follows Day (Ken Theeradeth Wongpuapan), who was working on a film set using a pool. He stays after to clean up the set and becomes stranded in the empty pool with a crocodile and his injured girlfriend, Kay (Grace Ratnomnot Ratchiratham).

I really wanted to love this movie, I really did. It just was executed so poorly that it made it an exhausting watch. This movie is when every bad thing that you could ever think of comes perfectly together to target one singular person. And for a creature feature, that would normally work. The problem lies in that the film takes itself too seriously and tries too hard to be a solid thriller and wanting the audience to not think about how absurd everything that is going on is that it completely misses the mark. It wanted to capitalize on the realness of the event that the absurdity of this perfect storm was completely unrealistic. All that being said, I did like how the crocodile was portrayed. The goal of the movie was to ultimately focus on the pool being the big bad, and not the creature. It takes a while for you to realize that, and it is a good twist that the movie did well working that element well. The crocodile was as just a victim as Day and Kay were, and thus the actions of the crocodile were much less over the top and real.

Spoiler:

Another major misstep in the movie was the death of his dog. It was unnecessarily gruesome and placed at the end solely for a reaction to an audience. At this point it does fit with every absurd thing that could go wrong did, but it was an obvious ploy for reaction that was not warranted and did absolutely nothing for the plot, nor help with the horror. It was a ridiculous writing decision.

The Pool is streaming on Shudder and AsianCrush.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: The Medium (2021)

The Medium was probably my most anticipated movie of the year, and luckily Shudder picked it up after it made its festival rounds. The movie was a joint Thai/Korean production, premiering at the Bucheon International Film Festival and released in Korean theaters on July 14th. Directed by Thai director Banjong Pisanthanakun (Shutter), and produced by Korean director Na Hong Jin who is known for the 2016 possession film, The Wailing, it was primed to be a great film.

The Medium follows a documentary crew as they travel to Isan in northeastern Thailand to document the life of a local shaman, Nim (Sawanee Utoomma). While there the crew notices how strange her niece, Ming (Narilya Gulmongkolpech), has been acting and starts to focus their attention on her increasing outbursts and aggression, thinking that they might be witnessing her possession by the spirit of Bayan, an ancestral God that has been possessing women in the family for generations, and who currently inhabits Nim.

We see most of the movie through the lens of the documentary crew, as a pretty polished film. The focus of the film, even when we start to see Ming develop symptoms, is that of the family and their practice and it allowed for an interesting look into the culture of the religion which I think enhanced the viewing. A lot of movies like this get lost culturally when you don’t have any basis on the religion or the practices, and the movie allowed for there to be ‘learning’ points without stopping the momentum. While the movie takes a bit to get to some of the scarier parts, I felt that there was a lot of subtle horror that was slowly worked in well through Nim’s character and seeing her at a loss for what to do and her potential loss of faith. It’s a quiet and uncomfortable scare that is sad as you watched her struggle to figure out why this was happening, and the destruction of her family that has already seen so much.

Narilya’s portrayal of Ming is fantastic throughout the film. Her descent into madness caused by her possession was creepy and naturally intensified as the movie progressed. The moments she’s discussing her despair and the uncertainty about what is going on and the haunting images in her dreams was terrifying and only further was helped as she was able to accurately show the subtle differences when the evil spirit was possessing her and when it was Ming struggling to keep it out.

I really enjoyed the movie and had a combination of moments I look for in my horror. Along with my love of slow quiet burns, the cinematography was gorgeous and the landscape only helped further my immersement in what was going on.

The Medium is currently streaming on Shudder.

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