EXHUMA **** South Korea 2024 Dir: Jang Jae-hyun. 134 mins
As was evident from The Wailing, Korean spiritual horror can be unnerving and atmospheric perhaps more so than the overdone Catholic horror subgenre in the West. There’s something nerve-racking about a shaman dancing to rhythmic drums and slashing through dead pigs, hoping to cleanse wrinkled corpses of malevolent spirits.
While The Wailing did set a very high standard not just for South Korea but for exorcism-core horror on a universal level, director Jang Jae-hyun’s 2024 horror Exhuma comes off as a close competitor. The ambitious near 140-minute runtime gives way to a well-paced supernatural thriller that delves into occult elements and the very creation of South Korea itself.
Old Boy and I Saw The Devil star Choi Min-sik plays an old-school feng shui master whose professional duties include finding the ideal burial grounds to ensure the dead’s safe arrival to the afterlife. On the other end is a much younger shaman (played by K-drama Goblin starlet Kim Go-eun), one who laces up her Converse sneakers before an exorcism. She is more strong-willed and money-minded, picking wealthy clients who can pay a fortune to free themselves from any skeletons in their closets.
On the surface, Exhuma feels like a movie rooted in Korean superstition. But as the characters dig deeper graves and the plot unravels further, Exhuma expertly explores the grey territory that lies between science and myths. When the feng shui master and the shaman encounter an ominous grave in the middle of nowhere, chaos follows with the same intensity as The Wailing or the Japanese found footage horror Noroi: The Curse (both essentials if you are getting started with East Asian horror).
But within its deep-rooted mythology and rapid sequence of accidents, Exhuma has enough merit to stand out on its own. The terror is hyper-realistic, thanks to most of the action unfurling in sprawling real-world natural landscapes. In-your-face jump scares are minimised in favour of plenty of numerous blink-and-miss elements hiding in plain sight. What could have been treated as a formulaic movie monster is teased through hallucinatory visions. As for the sound design, there is enough throaty Buddhist chanting to keep you alert throughout the movie.
All in all, Exhuma is an increasingly immersive and intriguing Korean horror that fully utilises its long duration and reinvents familiar genre tropes. No longer can spirits be confined to a wooden coffin or a haunted house. The spirits of Exhuma are wandering beings that float around you till the very end.
Review by Shaurya Thapa