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What Wydeven possesses in “The Medium” is a keen eye for visuals that
compliment the story he’s attempting to tell within the space of only
twenty-two minutes. “The Medium” is a rather interesting tale that
starts off with much less of an impact than we’d ever suspect, and
Wydeven takes what could have been a boring film, and adds an eye for
detail, even with the apparently limited scenery. What the real appeal
is of “The Medium," is the detail.
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Wydeven really does know how to set the stages for the
supernatural, and he makes the ghosts here rather morbid to
behold. Raven James passes an abandoned theater one night,
is apparently signaled by a female ghost on the other end of
the door, and he decides to investigate. What emerges is a
rather engrossing look into a decades old mystery, with old
fashioned camera tricks that work better than they should.
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The stand out from the rest of the cast is Jessica Heyel who is very
effective as the resident apparition who has a spotty back story that
plays a great importance in the overall hook of the story, meanwhile
Jeffery Glenn, and Jarrod Crooks are solid in their performances as the
two men forced to huddle together in the abandoned theater and unfold
this mystery that unravels in a memorable finisher that Wydeven
approaches with an idea of tension and suspense.
Visually, the
film looks great, but story wise, it’s not something I’ve never seen
before. Ultimately, “The Medium” is a story I’ve seen about a thousand
times. A young man who finds himself a the throes of a powerful
apparition, all of which is heavily derived from “The Sixth Sense,” and
the series “The Medium” or "Ghost Whisperer" except without Jennifer Love Hewitt’s jugs to
distract us from the nonsense. “The Medium” suffers from predictability,
and plays off like the last ten minutes of a larger television series. Wydeven asks us to invest in these characters in only twenty two
minutes, and the sentiment is much too forced to garner any sympathy
from us, in the end. We’re supposed to be engrossed in our character
Raven’s journey into this theater, and suddenly are supposed to care
about this owner of the abandoned theater, and it leads to a climax that
didn’t pack enough of an emotional punch.
Visually “The
Medium” looks great, with great flashback sequences that almost look
genuine, paired with mounting tension, and rather eerie sequences, but
that’s undermined by an under developed and rushed story that feels like
the truncated last moments of an episode of a television series with no
effect.
- For more
information including purchase directions, trailers, and festival
dates, visit
the official website.
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