The Medium

A documentary crew follow a shaman in rural Isan, in north-east Thailand, and the last twenty minutes are relentless.

Nim inherited the goddess Ba Yan from her family line. Her niece is showing signs of being possessed by something else, and the film spends an hour establishing the local religious practice with real specificity before anything happens.

Banjong Pisanthanakun made it with Na Hong-jin, who wrote The Wailing, and it has the same refusal to confirm whether the ritual apparatus works.

The found-footage frame is used properly: the crew are characters, the cameras have reasons to be running, and the final sequence uses that to remove the safety of an edit.

Genuinely upsetting and the animal content is real. Go in warned.