Imaginative Korean Horror Exhuma Gives Old Spirits New Life
Writer/director Jang Jae-hyun’s Exhuma bobs and weaves in ways American exorcism stories couldn’t fathom. Shades of The Wailing’s transformative storytelling covers its haunted burial grounds, traditional exhumation practices and resentful spirits, all with filmmaking ambitions that think outside the (coffin) box. Exhuma presents as ordinary until it’s not, a splendid feature of slippery South Korean thrillers. Jang’s gravedigging ghost hunt takes multiple forms, each one more ferocious than the last, as nationalist histories manifest as a seething threat to modern generations.
Exhuma follows a quartet of afterlife specialists: There’s renowned shaman Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun), her full-body inked partner Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun), “Geomancer” AKA feng shui master Kim Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik) and mortician Yeong-geun (Yoo Hae-jin). A wealthy Korean American family hires Hwa-rim and Bong-gil to eliminate a “Grave’s Call” curse afflicting their newborn son; Sang-deok and Yeong-geun are enlisted to help locate the problem ancestor’s grave. Together, near North Korea’s border, the party discovers a nameless tombstone. They’re in the right place, but Sang-deok can’t shake an alarming aura around the site. Some jobs aren’t worth the payday, as Sang-deok and his fellow undead bloodhounds are about to find out.
Jang’s approach welcomes international audiences into South Korean lore, where spirituality thrives without scoffs or sarcasm—it’s an immersive treat because there’s no disbelief or doubt to bog down the storytelling. Hwa-rim doesn’t waste time clashing against that one annoying pest who continually downplays supernatural experiences (the “they’re not real” plant). A propulsive energy trims fatty tropes off Exhuma’s lean cut of vengeful, hereditary malevolence.
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