‘Exhuma’ Review – Hurry Up and Frustrate

Exhuma tells the story of a baby born to a wealthy Korean family living in America. The baby is, however, born with an illness incurable to modern medicine. A shaman named Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) and her pupil Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun) come in to investigate. Hwa-rim determines that the family has a curse known as Grave’s Call, which involves a vengeful spirit of one of the family’s ancestors haunting the eldest son.

In an effort to appease the ancestor, Hwa-rim and Bong-gil are enlisted to relocate the grave of the vengeful ancestor. They contact some past acquaintances to assist, including a geomancer named Kim Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik) and mortician Yeong-geon (Yoo Hae-jin). However, the condition of the gravesite reveals that this very lucrative job will likely turn deadly.

Two aspects attracted me to this South Korean supernatural horror film. I’ve been a fan of Choi Min-sik since Oldboy and have tried to watch every film of his I come across. He is generally a part of films that are well worth seeing, with the exception of maybe Lucy.

The other is that Exhuma is being compared to The Wailing, one of the best recent supernatural horror films; South Korean or otherwise.

Exhuma has a brilliant concept that seems to be stretched past its limitations before delivering supernatural terror. Much of the film’s 134-minute runtime rides on heavy strings of dialogue and undeniably rich imagery. The cinematographer for the film is Lee Mo-gae, whose credits include The Good, The Bad, and The Weird, A Tale of Two Sisters and Illang: The Wolf Brigade, as well as I Saw the Devil and The Tiger.

There are some dynamic camera tricks used to disorient the audience slightly. The most popular is the camera tilting upwards from the side, like when someone sits up suddenly after sleeping. The finale is perhaps the film’s most visually striking feature. Hwa-rim’s standoff with the Japanese ghoul while hiding behind this incredibly foreboding tree at the grave site is so good.

Exhuma is more devoted to two individuals who are familiar with the miraculous and another two who have expertise with the undead. They are attempting to make ends meet in the modern day while discussing their current assignments and how they target the rich. In today’s world, something financially lucrative is obviously more appealing, but it initially has you questioning if this is just a con for money.

The first hour or so of the film is a lot of talking, a strange pig ritual that seems to last forever, and the licking of dirt. When none of that is happening, the four main characters eat or talk about being hungry. These four individuals deal with the dead and the afterlife regularly, so the intrigue lies in what is unusual for them or what still scares them.

Events in the film don’t pick up until the coffin’s opening and then again once the second coffin is introduced. There are some reasonably great gore sequences, but they seem so few and far between. Sadly, the Japanese ghoul has maybe ten minutes of screen time, which is the film’s best part.

The performances in Exhuma are top-notch. As Kim Sang-duk, Choi Min-sik is at the tail end of his career. He’s an older guy trying to make enough money for his daughter’s wedding. Sang-duk and the undertaker Yeong-geun (Yoo Hae-jin) are constantly griping and bickering with one another. Kim Go-eun delivers the standout performance of the film. Her portrayal of emotion is unparalleled, and her story is by far the most interesting.

There are slow burns, and then there’s Exhuma; comparable to a snail trying to crawl uphill through a glue trap. The film plants little seeds and irregularities during an assignment that is already on the peculiar side. The performances are strong, and every frame is like an old and creepy haunted house painting.

Whether the film is worth two hours of buildup will be entirely up to you. There’s some excellent paranormal horror in the second half of the film, but having the big payoff be a ghost being hit several times with a wet piece of wood is bizarre, even after you consider what that piece of wood is and what it’s being doused with.

Bloody memorable sequences aside, Exhuma is worth the watch but would have benefitted from more efficient pacing and a little less emphasis on being so hungry after dealing with the dead for a living.

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