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.
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. 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.