EXHUMA - Mark Reviews Movies

Exhuma, Well Go USA

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 21, 2024

Exhuma is a ghost story drenched in atmosphere and dread for evils of the past. It's a film that takes its mythology seriously, and it doesn't matter if one believes in the supernatural or not when a story believes in it as much as this one does here. Writer/director Jang Jae-hyun creates a tale with just enough internal logic and just enough of something to say about the lingering ramifications of past deeds that the film is a bit more than an exercise in style.

Just as that, though, Jang's technique is quite impressive. The director understands a few vital things about horror that too many filmmakers seem to overlook or ignore.

Location is one of them, and this film gives us a string of eerie ones as the backdrop of its twisty tale of ghosts, evil spirits, and a mystery that goes back decades. It helps, of course, when the entirety of the story suggests that an entire country and the generations that have followed the sins of the past might somehow be cursed by remnants of what happened.

That's pretty much the setup for the plot, which starts with shaman Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) and her apprentice Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun) traveling from South Korea to Los Angeles. There, a well-to-do family with roots in Korea have just welcomed a new baby, but for some reason, the newborn won't stop crying. The child needs pharmaceutical sedation just to stay quiet and sleep. The baby's father Ji-yong (Kim Jae-cheol) is certain that his child is cursed—a curse that has plagued the family since the death of the man's grandfather. If that's the case, the only solution is to exhume the grandfather's body and cremate the remains, hopefully sending his restless spirit to the afterlife and getting it out of the affairs of mortals.

For the plan to work, Hwa-rim needs help from other experts. One of them is Sang-duk (Choi Min-sik), a renowned geomancer of 40-some years, who practices feng shui and offers his services to those who want to ensure that there's natural harmony in building projects. The most lucrative angle of his practice, though, is finding the perfect burial plots for the wealthy. For that job, he enlists the aid of funeral director Young-geun (Yoo Hai-jin), who literally knows where all the bodies are buried in the country—well, all but one, as it turns out—and which graves can reasonably be transferred to a new owner.

One of the reasons Jang can take the material as seriously as he does here is because these characters are so grounded in a sense of meticulous professionalism. They all know what they're doing, genuinely believe in both the reality and the importance of their work, and go about it with such sincerity that we start to kind of believe it, too.

Hwa-rim just wants to help a poor baby that's in pain, and Bong-gil wants to prove that he's worthy of becoming a shaman one day, as well. Sang-duk is about to become a grandfather, leading him to wonder if his gravesite juggling is really what he wants his legacy to be, and Young-geun feels similarly, even if he's pragmatic about the fact that there's only so much land in the country to be allotted to graves.

It's simple stuff, but that's what makes it believable. That's vital to a story that quickly becomes about spiritual possession, murderous ghosts, and a demonic entity that has a taste for blood and fish.

Here's where we get to the first of those locations. It's the grave of Ji-yong's grandfather, which amounts to an unmarked tombstone near the top of a wooded mountain, where the clearing has a rather spectacular view across the forest and toward North Korea. None of the team can figure out why this man, supposedly one of some power and wealthy and influence, would be buried so unceremoniously, and just by tasting the earth, Sang-duk can tell this is not a spiritually clean plot. If they're going exhume the remains, the team has to perform an elaborate ritual (presented with thorough attention to detail in a hauntingly edited sequence), get the coffin to a crematorium quickly, and make sure no one opens the thing, lest the ghost of the man do a lot of damage.

At this point, matters of plot and suspense take over the material, but it works, because Jang establishes the stakes and rules of that plot, as well as how any little mistake or miscalculation—such as not checking the weather ahead of time—can have terrible consequences. When those consequences inevitably happen, Jang's use of reflections and clever fake-outs (A scene in which the same voice simultaneously comes from over a phone and behind a door is particularly impressive) give what's pretty routine stuff involving possession an element of unanticipated surprise.

The real surprises keep coming, though, after everything seems to have been resolved. Let's just say that another potential threat emerges, raises the stakes, and connects itself to the country's history of colonization and war as a monster of metal, fire, and a mind for conquering. Some of that is set on a farm, where shadows pass to show the results of grisly violence, silhouettes show it, and our heroes have to confront something beyond their powers. The rest of it is back at the grave, where the beastly entity rests like a vampire in the dirt.

It's visually striking, but more importantly, it still exists squarely in the realm of possibility established by Jang's keen storytelling. Exhuma is smart, unsettling, and believes the potential of its tale at every turn.

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