'Exhuma' Digs Up Enthralling South Korean Folk Horror Punctuated by Relentless Dread [Review]

​Every culture has its own approach to death. Here in America, we’ll throw loved ones in the cheapest wooden box we can find, bury them at the closest cemetery, maybe visit once a year at best…and that’s before some corporation moves their headstone to another site, but not the body! Others practice more, how should we say, respectful rituals in putting spirits to rest. One such place is South Korea, and in writer/director Jang Jae-hyun’s Exhuma, the filmmaker explores the country’s long history in relation to death with a sinister folk tale rich in lore and expertly crafted to play the audience’s nerves like a screaming violin.
 
Shaman Hwa-rim (Kim Ge-eun) and her partner Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun) are summoned by the wealthy Park Ji-yong (Kim Jae-cheol) in order to dispel a supernatural curse plaguing his infant son. Knowing they’ll need help to deal with this case, Hwa-rim enlists the help of geomancer Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik) and his friend/mortician Young-geun (Yoo Hae-jin). Their investigation leads them to an unmarked grave on an ominous as all hell mountain. Sang-deok isn’t too keen on exhuming the corpse buried below, but Hwa-rim convinces them to proceed anyway, unleashing an evil more powerful than anything they could have expected.
 
Right from the moment we meet Hwa-rim and Bong-gil on a plane, faces framed to be split by shadow and light, Exhuma reaches in and grips the mind with a clawed hand that doesn’t loosen even a bit for the proceeding two hours. The dread Jae-hyun instills is simply masterful. Patient camerawork and a titillating sound design create absorbing atmospherics that creep up along the hairs of your neck. Subtle yet engaging performances—Ge-eun and Min-sik are tremendous—draw the viewer in until it feels like we’re standing on the precipice of a deep, dark pit with the characters, looking in and knowing there’s something there looking back at us. If you were to tell me that Jae-hyun was a James Wan fan, I’d believe it, as the director often incorporates a vibe reminiscent of Wan’s first Conjuring film, right down to a score that feels eerily familiar. Slow zooms on shadows in the background, sudden and aggressive shocks, it all reminds of the sort of stylish haunter that one of this era’s greatest horror filmmakers has popularized, with Jae-hyun infusing plenty of his instincts to make it his own. And that’s before mentioning the deep blacks that inhabit the framing, the misty color palette of most scenes, and outstanding, sometimes gory, effects work that will leave your jaw hanging.
 
Want to know what it’s like to be buried in a coffin and enveloped by ghoulish whispers that grow louder and more frightening as time goes on? Exhuma instills that sort of building terror.

​Yet more impressive than the filmmaker’s direction is his storytelling ability. Drawing the audience in with creepy ambience is one thing. Keeping them there with a spellbinding tale is another. Perhaps it’s the dumb American in me, but Jae-hyun’s Exhuma fascinates in its depiction of ancient rituals associated with death, exploring the depths of spiritual professions such as geomancy that certainly isn’t common here in the states (an alternative term for Fengshui, essentially the art of arranging various sites, including graves). We’re involved in quiet conversations of proper burial sites and bad earth. Thrown into hypnotic ritual dances accentuated by blood. Witness to the unearthing of beautifully crafted coffins…and other, much more unsightly items. Terms such as The Grave’s Calling are tossed out, described as an ancestor “throwing a tantrum”. The filmmaker pulls the audience into the dirt with the characters of this world, expounding on cultural practices and beliefs in the supernatural likely unfamiliar to the average viewer, allowing the film to feel fresh and exciting in the realm of supernatural horror. Exhuma even features lore expressing that the evil must be invited into a home to do its business, making for some particularly tense and terrifying moments. And if you think I’m telling you everything, I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface. At one point, Jae-hyun pulls the rug out from under the viewer, leaving you hanging over a sinister pit like Wiley Coyote before plummeting into the depths of darkness the filmmaker aims to explore.
 
Aside from an encroaching evil, bleeding orifices, snakes with human heads and plenty of other fun bits that’ll make horror fans giddy, Exhuma also happens to engage in thoughtful ponderings of the afterlife while touching on the traumatic history of South Korea and its relationship with Japan. As mentioned above, the characters at the black heart of this enthralling story are trapped somewhere between the light and the dark, the living and the dead, science and the supernatural. They carry with them the double-edged sword of belief, stronger in their knowledge but constantly fighting the doubt of others. “All the skeptics can fuck off,” says Min-sik early on. Frightening as it can be, Exhuma is a film that respects death and all that comes with it. It asks the audience to consider how we treat loved ones once they pass on, to grasp the importance of honoring and cherishing them. To disregard the dead, well…who knows where that may lead to.
 
With shades of Wan in crafting various frights and a grave-deep script so rich one can imagine it making for an excellent novel, Exhuma stakes its claim as one of the best horror films of the year so far. Jang Jae-hyun manages to pack his film full of terrors and intriguing concepts without ever overwhelming the audience and burying them underneath it all. Dig up Exhuma and invite it in. Unlike some of the film’s unfortunate characters, you won’t regret it.

Exhuma is now on VOD and arrives on Shudder June 14th. 

By Matt Konopka