Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) and her apprentice, Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun), two skilled Korean shamans, are called to investigate a strange disease plaguing the newborn son of a wealthy Korean-American family.  They trace the cause back to a vengeful ancestor who did not receive a burial appropriate to their class, so Park Ji-Yong  (Kim Jae-cheol), the patriarch of the family, authorizes the relocation of the grave.  Feng shui master Kim Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik) and a mortician Yeong-geun (Yoo Hae-jin) lead the effort, but they discover all too late that there is something even more sinister buried in the stony, dead soil atop the mountain where the ancestor rests.  

Jang Jae-hyun writes and directs Exhuma, a 134-minute Korean language horror film that debuted at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival ahead of a massively successful theatrical release becoming the 6th highest-grossing South Korean film of all time.  For US audiences who missed out on its limited run, Shudder picked up streaming rights where it will become widely accessible to a new audience eager for an enveloping horror film that presents a rich tapestry of scares in a well thought out and thrilling way. 

Exhuma is a film that can be split into two parts fairly easily, and given the length of these parts, it is almost as if the sequel was attached directly to the first film.  Looking then at the first half, it follows a fairly procedural and investigative arc as Hwa-rim and Bong-gil begin to interview Park Ji-Yong and his family.  Something to note is that in the world of the film, the religious context of good vs evil and the presence and influence of vengeful spirits and sacred talismans are treated with the same mater of factness as the laws of physics that bind our world.  These rituals are accepted and expected as part of life for these characters, and the audience will do well to accept them at that as well or the motivations behind many of the main characters will struggle to land. 

While the story is primarily Hwa-rim’s and by extension, Bong-gil’s, much of the first act follows the weary Kim Sang-deok, a specialist in finding the perfect resting sites to ensure a peaceful afterlife.  Not quite with one foot in his own grave, he nevertheless brings a gravitas to the story, not in a showy way, but in a way that helps us feel the weight and the consequence of the narrative which helps us ground ourselves even as the supernatural gets more and more out of hand.  He brings a hesitation to the scene in a way that opens the world up to the audience and in such a specific way that the terrors we witness become our fault for not heeding his warnings; but the terrors we witness are also undeniably exciting. 

Despite being a more straightforward procedural in the first half, there are two showstopping sequences that help keep us invested.  The first is the exhumation ritual in which Bong-gil leads a drum and chant while Hwa-rim dances with knives, shedding blood, so that the ground will not notice the coffin being removed.  It is Lee Mo-gae’s first opportunity to really break the camera free from the talking heads and a/b format, allowing it to lean in close and then swing wildly to the beat of the drum in a dance of its own.  Later, the vengeful ancestor shows itself to Ji-Yong on a rainy evening.  It is a terrifying scene as the ghost creeps through the elegant room and lulls its victims to a violent demise, and while on paper it may seem rather conventional, Jae-hyun uses this as a wakeup call to audiences that every detail here matters as the true theme of the film comes into focus in what feels like a finale but is only the halfway point. 

As the spirit surgically dispatches with the members of his family, Jae-hyun reveals the heart of the narrative to us; the fraught relations between Japan and Korea.  The ghost is the grandfather of Ji-Young, a military leader and a Japanese loyalist during the Korean occupation, and for that, he was given an improper burial and now his spirit is tormented in the afterlife.  This culmination of the ghost story is visceral without being gratuitous, even when the blood splatter is at its most eccentric, and though we are held in the perfect realm for horror where we can not look away from the screen, we are never pushed so far to the point of nervous laughter to break the tension and bring our heart rate down.  Jae-hyun is playing with us like a cat with a mouse, and the games have just begun. 

The film kicks into overdrive shortly after the cremation of the casket which lifts the curse, and saves the life of the child.  Strange things continue to happen, though, and when the team returns to the mountain, they discover there is something else buried in the ground; a massive casket buried vertically.  They take this seven-foot-long coffin to a temple for the night on their way to cremate it as well, but in the middle of the night, the ghoul breaks free and embarks on a killing spree.  Eventually cornered, he erupts into a ball of flame, shooting into the night sky in a sequence that will sear itself into the minds of audiences as one of the most beautiful and terrifying scenes of the entire film which is already chock full of memorable moments. 

With ghosts, rituals, possession, history, gore, and lore, Exhuma has it all, yet across its hefty runtime, there is not an ounce of fat on the script.  For Western audiences, Jae-hyun is not interested in educating about the nuance of the political relationships that inform the core of the story, but there is enough narrative support that the broad strokes can still be clearly understood and the motivations tracked.  Beyond the masterful script, the craft behind the film is also working at an exceptional level.  As already praised, Mo-gae fills the frame with beautiful colors that complement and contrast with each other as needed while Kim Tae-seong provides a creaking, groaning soundscape that worms its way into our bones similar to how the ghost of Ji-young’s grandfather takes possession of his victims.  Editor Jung Byung-jin has no easy task balancing all of these threads, especially the end cutting between three locations and keeping the main tension alive in the confrontation between the Ghoul and Hwa-rim.  Exhuma is another strong entry into the growing canon of South Korean horror that will please audiences with the various avenues it takes to achieve its scares while never sacrificing the nuanced and layered story in favor of a cheap thrill.